that it was impossible
for him to "catch the word" from the prompter at the side of the
stage. To assist him, therefore, in the delivery of his farewell
address, one of the performers, provided with a copy of the speech,
was stationed behind the speaker and instructed to keep moving forward
and backward as he did, like his shadow. The effect must certainly
have been whimsical. Winstone had been a pupil of Quin's, and had
played Downright to Garrick's Kitely in "Every Man in his Humour," at
Drury Lane, in 1751. He was a constant attendant at the Exchange
Coffee House, the established resort of the Bristol merchants. "He had
the good fortune at one time to win a considerable prize in the
lottery, and often looked in at the insurance offices, where he
sometimes received premiums as an underwriter of ships and cargoes."
In consequence, he obtained much patronage, and always inserted at the
head of the playbills of his benefit, "By desire of several eminent
merchants."

Garrick, in 1765, after his return from Italy (according to Jackson's
"History of the Scottish Stage"), introduced various improvements in
the theatre, and amongst them, the employment of a row of foot-lights
in lieu of the old circular chandeliers over head. The labours of the
candle-snuffers in front of the curtain were probably brought to a
conclusion soon afterwards, when oil-lamps took the place of candles.
The snuffer then found his occupation gone. Probably the trimming of
the lamps became his next duty; and then, as time went on, he
developed into a "gasman," that most indispensable attendant of the
modern theatre.

Thackeray, in his novel of "The Virginians," has some very apposite
remarks upon the limited state of illumination in which our ancestors
were content to dwell. "In speaking of the past," he writes, "I think
the night-life of society a hundred years since was rather a _dark_
life. There was not one wax-candle for ten which we now see in a
ladies' drawing-room: let alone gas and the wondrous new illuminations
of clubs. Horrible guttering tallow smoked and stunk in passages. The
candle-snuffer was a notorious officer in the theatre. See Hogarth's
pictures: how dark they are, and how his feasts are, as it were,
begrimed with tallow! In 'Mariage a la Mode,' in Lord Viscount
Squanderfield's grand saloons, where he and his wife are sitting
yawning before the horror-stricken steward when their party is over,
there are but eight candles--one o