e first time that Henry went to the Lyceum after Fussie's death, every
one was anxious and distressed, knowing how he would miss the dog in his
dressing-room. Then an odd thing happened. The wardrobe cat, who had
never been near the room in Fussie's lifetime, came down and sat on
Fussie's cushion! No one knew how the "Governor" would take it. But when
Walter was sent out to buy some meat for it, we saw that Henry was not
going to resent it! From that night onwards the cat always sat night
after night in the same place, and Henry liked its companionship. In
1902, when he left the theater for good, he wrote to me:

"The place is now given up to the rats--all light cut off, and only
Barry[1] and a foreman left. Everything of mine I've moved away,
including the Cat!"

[Footnote 1: The stage-door keeper.]

I have never been to America yet without going to Niagara. The first
time I saw the great falls I thought it all more wonderful than
beautiful. I got away by myself from my party, and looked and looked at
it, and I listened--and at last it became dreadful and I was
_frightened_ at it. I wouldn't go alone again, for I felt queer and
wanted to follow the great flow of it. But at twelve o'clock, with the
"sun upon the topmost height of the day's journey," most of Nature's
sights appear to me to be at their plainest. In the evening, when the
shadows grow long and all hard lines are blurred, how soft, how
different, everything is! It was noontide, that garish cruel time of
day, when I first came in sight of the falls. I'm glad I went again in
other lights--but one should live by the side of all this greatness to
learn to love it. Only once did I catch Niagara in _beauty_, with pits
of color in its waters, no one color definite--all was wonderment,
allurement, fascination. The _last_ time I was there it was wonderful,
but not beautiful any more. The merely stupendous, the merely marvelous,
have always repelled me. I cannot _realize_, and become terribly weak
and doddering. No terrific scene gives me pleasure. The great canons
give me unrest, just as the long low lines of my Sussex marshland near
Winchelsea give me rest.

At Niagara William Terriss slipped and nearly lost his life. At night
when he appeared as Bassanio, he shrugged his shoulders, lowered his
eyelids, and said to me--

"Nearly gone, dear,"--he would call everybody "dear"--"But Bill's luck!
Tempus fugit!"

What tempus had to do with it, I don'