The memorable night arrived. Duck took the chair, presiding with rustic geniality over the pleased, and indeed surprised, comedians. Supper at an end, Duck hammered for silence, and rose, amid cheers, to make the speech of the evening. He told the devoted band of players what a lot he thought of them, how their efforts had helped the success of the comedy, and, in a word, how tremendously pleased he was with affairs generally. He concluded his address in the following peroration: “But, ladies and gentlemen, them’s mere words. I wished to present everyone ’ere a solid token of my feelin’s, so I ’ave determined to give each member of my company a little momentum of the occasion. . . . Waiter!” he called out to the smiling attendant, “bring in them momentums!” H. J. Byron, in pre-Duckian days, added to the joys of the town by inventing “malaprops,” which he used to put into the mouth of poor Mrs. Swanborough, of the Strand Theatre. But the advent of Duck put an end to that branch of industry as far as Byron was concerned. Duck found his own “malaprops,” and in their presence the pale contrivances of the wit were “As moonlight is to sunlight or as water is to wine.” By the way, I would like to say here, in justice to an amiable lady long since dead, that Mrs. Swanborough was not at all the sort of person that the Byron anecdotes make her out to be. I was for years acquainted with her, and I never knew her to be guilty of such solecisms as the “H. J.” series put to her account. The banquet and the presentation of “momentums” exhausted Duck’s capabilities in the direction of hospitality and largesse; for he was penurious above all things, and desperately thrifty. In the drawing-room scene in “Our Boys,” the stage directions provide for a chandelier in the centre of the ceiling. In the London production this was ablaze every night with wax candles. The first night on tour, the property-master had provided candles on the original scale. Duck nearly had a fit when he saw the illumination. He summoned the property-man to his office, and—_both_ eyes now shedding tears—he ordered that in future the candles be reduced in number by one half, and those that were used to be cut in four pieces. The expression of the property-man was one of mingled distress and contempt. Observing which, Duck, wiping his eyes, observed with a smile: “The shorter they har, the longer they’ll last. See? Hey?” I suspect he saw, for he spat on the carpet; and made his exit without a word.