If anyone were to ask me who, in my experience, was the most mirth-provoking actor I had ever seen, I should, without the least hesitation, mention a name which is quite unknown to the playgoers of this generation, and is being rapidly forgotten by those who belong to the last. And the name that I should mention would be that of John Sleeper Clarke. The house at which he originally appeared was the little Strand Theatre, merrily associated with the burlesques of the Broughs and Byron, and subsequently with the less artless productions of H. B. Farnie, in which so much laughter was made for the public by Marius and Edward Terry, and that plump, inimitable Angelina Claude. J. S. Clarke was an American, and, although he appeared with great success in some of our dramatic masterpieces—he was the finest Bob Acres and the best Dr. Pangloss of his day—he preferred to enact characters written for him in pieces of which he held the copyright. Clarke’s favourite characters were Major Wellington De Boots and Toodles. It is always a hopeless task to attempt to convey to those who have not witnessed it the effect of a comic performance on the observer. It would not be correct to describe Clarke as an “eccentric” actor. His thoroughly artistic and masterly impersonation of Bob Acres and Dr. Pangloss quite forbid any hasty generalization of the kind. It would be more just to say that he selected eccentric characters for representation, and in the illustration of these characters he employed for all they were worth certain quaint methods of voice, expression, gesture, and gait which were quite his own. The pieces in which he introduced himself as an irresponsible eccentric were as a rule flimsy compositions, entirely negligible from a literary and dramatic point of view. But in the mouth of Clarke the inanities of the dramatist became precious gems. He would utter an author’s commonplace with such an air of comic gravity—if I may use the expression—with such an inimitable facial note of enjoyment in the delivery, that the little house in the Strand would rock with laughter over sayings which in cold print would appear to be the veriest drivel.