ervation and reproduction of human
character, particularly in its humorous aspects. To this end Nature had
gifted him with a face that was capable of every form of transformation,
and at an early age he hastened to put it in training. All day long he
was pulling faces. As an artist will sketch everything he comes across,
so Mike would endeavour to imitate any characteristic expression or
attitude, animate or inanimate, in the world around him. Dogs, little
boys, and grotesque old men were his special delight, and of all his
elders he had, it goes without saying, a private gallery of irreverently
faithful portraits.

In addition to his plastic face, Nature had given him a larynx which was
capable of imitating every human and inhuman sound. To squeak like a
pig, bark like a dog, low like a cow, and crow like a cock, were the
veriest juvenilia of his attainments; and he could imitate the buzzing
of a fly so cunningly that flies themselves have often been deceived. It
was this delight in imitation for its own sake, and not so much that he
had been caught by the usual allurements of the theatre, that he looked
upon the career of an actor as his natural and ultimate calling. It was
already privately whispered in the little circle that Mike would some
day go on the stage. But don't tell that as yet to old Mr. Laflin,
whatever you do.

There was a good deal more in Mike than pulling faces, as Esther
recently, and Henry before her, had discovered. His acting was some day
to stir the hearts of audiences, because he had instincts for knowing
human nature inside as well as out, knew the secret springs of tears, as
well as the open secrets of laughter; and it was rather on this common
ground of a rich "many-veined humanity" that these two had met and
become friends, rather than on any real community of tastes and ideas.
Yet Mike loved books too, and had an excellent taste in them, though
perhaps he had hardly loved them, had not Henry and Esther loved them
first, and it is quite certain, and quite proper, that he never found a
page of any book so fascinating as the face of some lined and battered
human being. Over that writing he was never found asleep.

There was one other literary matter on which he held a very personal and
unshakable opinion,--Henry Mesurier's future as a poet; and on this he
came just in the nick of time to cheer him this evening.

"The next move will be to London, old fellow," he said; "and then you'll
soon