ader with my thoughts about the first-night
audience, strange assembly as it is,--those I reserve for my Memoirs,--nor
the humiliating story of how I got lost during the _entr'acte_ in a
lot of red plush passages, and saw the third act from the gallery. The
only point upon which I wish to lay stress was the remarkable effect of
the acting upon me. You must remember I had lived a quiet and retired
life, and had never been to the theatre before, and that I am extremely
sensitive to vivid impressions. At the risk of repetition I must insist
upon these points.

The first effect was a profound amazement, not untinctured by alarm. The
phenomenal unnaturalness of acting is a thing discounted in the minds of
most people by early visits to the theatre. They get used to the fantastic
gestures, the flamboyant emotions, the weird mouthings, melodious
snortings, agonising yelps, lip-gnawings, glaring horrors, and other
emotional symbolism of the stage. It becomes at last a mere deaf-and-dumb
language to them, which they read intelligently _pari passu_ with the
hearing of the dialogue. But all this was new to me. The thing was called
a modern comedy, the people were supposed to be English and were dressed
like fashionable Americans of the current epoch, and I fell into the
natural error of supposing that the actors were trying to represent human
beings. I looked round on my first-night audience with a kind of wonder,
discovered--as all new Dramatic Critics do--that it rested with me to
reform the Drama, and, after a supper choked with emotion, went off to the
office to write a column, piebald with "new paragraphs" (as all my stuff
is--it fills out so) and purple with indignation. Barnaby was delighted.

But I could not sleep that night. I dreamt of actors--actors glaring,
actors smiting their chests, actors flinging out a handful of extended
fingers, actors smiling bitterly, laughing despairingly, falling
hopelessly, dying idiotically. I got up at eleven with a slight headache,
read my notice in the _Fiery Cross_, breakfasted, and went back to my
room to shave, (It's my habit to do so.) Then an odd thing happened. I
could not find my razor. Suddenly it occurred to me that I had not
unpacked it the day before.

"Ah!" said I, in front of the looking-glass. Then "Hullo!"

Quite involuntarily, when I had thought of my portmanteau, I had flung up
the left arm (fingers fully extended) and clutched at my diaphragm with my
right hand. I a