ife in incessant labor, and deny himself
everything for that purpose. It is a lesson we actors and actresses
cannot learn too early, for the bright and glorious heyday of our
success must always be brief at best.

Henry Irving, when he played Petruchio, had been toiling in the
provinces for eleven solid years, and not until Rawdon Scudamore in
"Hunted Down" had he had any success. Even that was forgotten in his
failure as Petruchio. What a trouncing he received from the critics who
have since heaped praise on many worse men!

I think this was the peculiar quality in his acting afterwards--a kind
of fine temper, like the purest steel, produced by the perpetual fight
against difficulties. Socrates, it is said, had every capacity for evil
in his face, yet he was good as a naturally good man could never be.
Henry Irving at first had everything against him as an actor. He could
not speak, he could not walk, he could not _look_. He wanted to do
things in a part, and he could not do them. His amazing power was
imprisoned, and only after long and weary years did he succeed in
setting it free.

A man with a will like that _must_ be impressive! To quick-seeing eyes
he must, no doubt. But my eyes were not quick, and they were, moreover,
fixed on a world outside the theater. Better than his talent and his
will I remember his courtesy. In those days, instead of having our
salaries brought to our dressing-rooms, we used to wait in a queue on
Treasury Day to receive them. I was always late in coming, and always in
a hurry to get away. Very gravely and quietly Henry Irving used to give
up his place to me.

I played once more at the Queen's after Katherine and Petruchio. It was
in a little piece called "The Household Fairy," and I remember it
chiefly through an accident which befell poor Jack Clayton through me.
The curtain had fallen on "The Household Fairy," and Clayton, who had
acted with me in it, was dancing with me on the stage to the music which
was being played during the wait, instead of changing his dress for the
next piece. This dancing during the entr'acte was very popular among us.
Many a burlesque quadrille I had with Terriss and others in later days.
On this occasion Clayton suddenly found he was late in changing, and,
rushing upstairs to his dressing-room in a hurry, he missed his footing
and fell back on his head. This made me very miserable, as I could not
help feeling that I was responsible. Soon afterwards I left