erience in
comedy.

I think I never played so well in my life as in that first act of 'Jim
the Penman;' but the stage was vast in comparison with any on which
I had until then appeared, and my customary business brought me only
within half a dozen paces of the door-way by which I should have
vanished. A sudden sense of strangeness and constraint came down upon
me like a cloud. The happy feeling of confidence vanished in a whiff
of chill spiritual wind. The last line was spoken before that unhappy
half-dozen of paces was achieved; and I left the stage in a dead
silence, which was as eloquent of failure as it had been one brief
minute earlier of success. I played half as well next night, but
disappeared with _aplomb_, with an effect as encouraging as the most
exigent artist could demand. So painful a thing is it to learn a new
trade! 'So much to learn, so much to do!'

I am ready to propound a novel theory, and I am insolent enough
to believe that I illustrate it in my own person. The time of full
middle-age is that at which a man most readily adapts himself to a
new art. It is at that time most assuredly necessary to accept certain
physical limitations. I advise no hitherto unpractised person to seek
excellence as a ground and lofty tumbler after five-and-forty. No
sensible person who has attained that respectable altitude of years will
try to make a _debut_ as Romeo. But supposing that a lad of fifteen
and a man of five-and-forty begin on the same day to study
landscape-painting, which of the two do you think will get nearer
Nature's secret in five years' time? Personally I shall back--_coteris
paribus_--the man of middle age. Or if it come to acting, who is likely
(physical limitations on both sides duly considered, of course) to offer
you the better study of a bit of human nature--the matured observer
or the unpractised un-regarding youth? I back the middle-aged man once
more.

My friendly critics of the London press told me that a middle-aged man
had taken to the stage as a duck takes to water. It was a bit of kindly
nonsense. I had worked like a galley-slave for nine months, and the nine
months of a man of the world is worth the nine years of a boy. And do I
profess to be an actor now? Not a bit of it, my friendly critic--not
a bit of it, in all honesty. But I mean to be. There is no art so
difficult--granted; but there is none so enchanting, so inspiring. Night
after night for a whole week, bar Saturday, when N