yceum was to get everything "rotten perfect," as
the theatrical slang has it, before the dress rehearsal. Father's test
of being rotten perfect was not a bad one. "If you can get out of bed in
the middle of the night and do your part, you're perfect. If you can't,
you don't really know it!"

Henry Irving applied some such test to every one concerned in the
production. I cannot remember any play at the Lyceum which did not begin
punctually and end at the advertised time, except "Olivia," when some
unwise changes in the last act led to delay.

He never hesitated to discard scenery if it did not suit his purpose.
There was enough scenery rejected in "Faust" to have furnished three
productions, and what was finally used for the famous Brocken scene cost
next to nothing.

Even the best scene-painters sometimes think more of their pictures than
of scenic effects. Henry would never accept anything that was not right
_theatrically_ as well as pictorially beautiful. His instinct in this
was unerring and incomparable.

I remember that at one scene-rehearsal every one was fatuously pleased
with the scenery. Henry sat in the stalls talking about everything _but_
the scenery. It was hard to tell what he thought.

"Well, are you ready?" he asked at last.

"Yes, sir."

"My God! Is that what you think I am going to give the public?"

Never shall I forget the astonishment of stage manager, scene-painter,
and staff! It was never safe to indulge in too much self-satisfaction
beforehand with Henry. He was always liable to drop such bombs!

He believed very much in "front" scenes, seeing how necessary they were
to the swift progress of Shakespeare's diverging plots. These cloths
were sometimes so wonderfully painted and lighted that they constituted
scenes of remarkable beauty. The best of all were the Apothecary scene
in "Romeo and Juliet" and the exterior of Aufidius's house in
"Coriolanus."

We never had electricity installed at the Lyceum until Daly took the
theater. When I saw the effect on the faces of the electric footlights,
I entreated Henry to have the gas restored, and he did. We used gas
footlights and gas limes there until we left the theater for good in
1902.

To this I attribute much of the beauty of our lighting. I say "our"
because this was a branch of Henry's work in which I was always his
chief helper. Until electricity has been greatly improved and developed,
it can never be to the stage what gas was. The t