hild in the scarlet bathing-suit and he became great pals. Indeed,
during the latter half of his life, through the good days and the bad,
there were very few friends who held so close a place in his sympathy
and his affections as Ethel Barrymore.

Until the summer of 1880 my brother continued on at the Episcopal
Academy. For some reason I was sent to a different school, but outside
of our supposed hours of learning we were never apart. With less than
two years' difference in our ages our interests were much the same, and
I fear our interests of those days were largely limited to out-of-door
sports and the theatre. We must have been very young indeed when my
father first led us by the hand to see our first play. On Saturday
afternoons Richard and I, unattended but not wholly unalarmed, would
set forth from our home on this thrilling weekly adventure. Having
joined our father at his office, he would invariably take us to a
chop-house situated at the end of a blind alley which lay concealed
somewhere in the neighborhood of Walnut and Third Streets, and where we
ate a most wonderful luncheon of English chops and apple pie. As the
luncheon drew to its close I remember how Richard and I used to fret
and fume while my father in a most leisurely manner used to finish off
his mug of musty ale. But at last the three of us, hand in hand, my
father between us, were walking briskly toward our happy destination.
At that time there were only a few first-class theatres in
Philadelphia--the Arch Street Theatre, owned by Mrs. John Drew; the
Chestnut Street, and the Walnut Street--all of which had stock
companies, but which on the occasion of a visiting star acted as the
supporting company. These were the days of Booth, Jefferson, Adelaide
Neilson, Charles Fletcher, Lotta, John McCullough, John Sleeper Clark,
and the elder Sothern. And how Richard and I worshipped them all--not
only these but every small-bit actor in every stock company in town.
Indeed, so many favorites of the stage did my brother and I admire that
ordinary frames would not begin to hold them all, and to overcome this
defect we had our bedroom entirely redecorated. The new scheme called
for a gray wallpaper supported by a maroon dado. At the top of the
latter ran two parallel black picture mouldings between which we could
easily insert cabinet photographs of the actors and actresses which for
the moment we thought most worthy of a place in our collection. As