Hugo Ames was, I think, the tallest man who ever adventured in Fleet Street. He is a younger brother of Captain “Ossy” Ames, who has the distinction of being the tallest man in the British Army. The career of Mr. Ames as a newspaper proprietor was brief—and disastrous. He established a smart little paper called _The Dwarf_, to which he contributed largely himself. He also founded _Smart Society_, and he was foolishly persuaded to purchase the _Hawk_. Ames was a splendid fellow, but he got into wrong hands, and as a consequence dropped a fortune at newspaper promotion in less than two years. . . . But I have exceeded the chapter limit which I had assigned to myself, and I have dealt with but a few of the dear—the very dear—departed papers of my day. . . . The sheeted dead press round me, gibbering and clamouring for notice. Poor ineffectual ghosts! They are doomed still to “walk.” I have no space in which to “lay” them. CHAPTER XIV MY FRIENDS THE PLAYERS NEARLY opposite the old Gaiety Theatre in the Strand stood the offices of Gaze and Co., the tourists’ agents. And in the early seventies the upper part of the premises had been let to a retired old sea-dog of portly person and convivial habits called Captain Harris. This gentleman had made a somewhat extensive acquaintance among the lesser lights of the stage, the music-hall, and the newspaper world, and he had taken the upper part of the Gaze office with the view of turning it into a Bohemian club. For a while the institution flourished greatly. It was named the Savoy Club—on the _lucus a non lucendo_ principle—and by those who had not been chosen for membership it was nicknamed “the Saveloy.” A continuous conviviality was the dominant note of the establishment. The hours kept by the members were astounding. The pace, in a word, was too fast. And in a couple of years the Savoy closed its doors, the unfortunate mariner who founded it having lost in the venture the savings of a lifetime. It was at the Savoy that I first met John Hollingshead. After the closing of his theatre he would drop in of a night, generally accompanied by one or two members of the Gaiety company. No man ever undertook the management of a playhouse with less practical knowledge of the stage than Hollingshead; no man ever conducted a theatre more successfully, and to no man is the public more indebted for the amelioration of the condition of that portion of it which patronizes the drama. Hollingshead was a man of sound common-sense, never hide-bound by tradition, and always possessing the courage of his opinions. These were the characteristics which he brought to bear on the unknown enterprise of theatrical management. And so considerable was the success attending the application of his principles to the unfamiliar task which he had undertaken, that in the course of a few years he became known all over “the profession” by the sobriquet of “Practical John.”