ss a charnel-house recital is!
So please to bear in mind, if I am not to fail in it,
That Hamlet's father's ghost must rob the Lyons Mail in it!
No! that's not correct! But you may spare your charity--
A good sepulchral groan's the thing for popularity!"

_H. Howe_:

(The "agricultural" actor, as Henry called him.)

"Boys, take my advice, the stage is not the question,
But whether at three score you'll all have my digestion.
Why yearn for plays, to pose as Brutuses or Catos in,
When you may get a garden to grow the best potatoes in?
You see that at my age by Nature's shocks unharmed I am!
Tho' if I sneeze but thrice, good heavens, how alarmed I am!
But act your parts like men, and tho' you all great sinners are,
You're sure to act like men wherever Irving's dinners are!"

_J.H. Allen_ (our prompter):

"Whatever be the play, _I_ must have a hand in it,
For won't I teach the supers how to stalk and stand in it?
Tho' that blessed Shakespeare never gives a ray to them,
_I_ explain the text, and then it's clear as day to them![1]
Plain as A B C is a plot historical,
When _I_ overhaul allusions allegorical!
Shakespeare's not so bad; he'd have more pounds and pence in him,
If actors stood aside, and let me show the sense in him!"

[Footnote 1: Once when Allen was rehearsing the supers in the Church
Scene in "Much Ado about Nothing," we overheard him show the sense in
Shakespeare like this:

"This 'Ero let me tell you is a perfect lady, a nice, innercent young
thing, and when the feller she's engaged to calls 'er an 'approved
wanton,' you naturally claps yer 'ands to yer swords. A wanton is a kind
of--well, you know she ain't what she ought to be!"

Allen would then proceed to read the part of Claudio:

"... not to knit my soul to an approved wanton."

Seven or eight times the supers clapped their "'ands to their swords"
without giving Allen satisfaction.

"No, no, no, that's not a bit like it, not a bit! If any of your sisters
was 'ere and you 'eard me call 'er a ----, would yer stand gapin' at me
as if this was a bloomin' tea party!"]

Louis Austin's little "Lyceum Play" was presented to me with a silver
water-jug, a souvenir from the company, and ended up with the following
pretty lines spoken by Katie Brown, a clever little girl who played all
the small pages' parts at this time:

"Although I'm but a little page,