The first movement in the drifting stage of my career was the result of my presence at the first performance of “School” at the old Prince of Wales Theatre in Tottenham Street. The hatchment painter and I had long before agreed that we would be present on that memorable occasion. The night came at last. We were early—or what in those days would have been considered early—and obtained seats at the back of the pit. At that time the suburbs still remained sane. There was no queue of demented women posted outside pit and gallery doors at eight o’clock in the morning so as to be in good time for a performance commencing at eight at night. But the seating capacity of Miss Wilton’s theatre was limited, the pittites being restricted to a very small area, and, having passed the check-taker, we felt that we might consider ourselves lucky in having gained admittance at all. Ah, to recall the sensations of that playgoing! The sigh of relief as I settle myself in my seat! The roseate air of pleasurable anticipation on the faces of those about me; the empty rows of the booked stalls stretching from the front row of the pit to the orchestra; the eager scanning of the features of the stalls as they file in; the curious feeling of cheery elation, of high expectation—these are sensations which grow very stale with use; they are the prerogatives of youth. Enjoy them, my boys, while you are in your heyday. They are moods for which the old and the _blasé_ would give a ransom to experience once again. Indirectly and ultimately this visit to the pit meant much to me. Immediately it meant my first appearance in print in a London publication; eventually it meant my first acquaintance with a dramatic author. Ultimately, perhaps, it meant the determination to a calling quite apart from that to which I had been devoted by my friends. My chirpy companion, as he kept pointing out to me the various distinguished stall-holders as they filed into their places, little dreamed—as, indeed, how should he?—that he was conversing with a dramatic critic _in embryo_, and that in the course of a few short years I, too, would have a stall set apart for me in that select parterre.