There must be many men about town who retain a vivid recollection of Clarke’s acting. They will bear me out as to the statement just made. They will remember how their sides shook as Clarke in “De Boots” made the entirely empty declaration: “My dear Felix, I call you Felix because you are my best friend!” What an extraordinary quality of irresistible humour he imparted to that absurdly puerile line! Again, what a weight and world of dramatic humour he imposed on the trifling sentence addressed to the pump in “Toodles”! The scene is one in which he depicts a man imperfectly sober. Stumbling about a yard, he knocks against the pump. He grasps the handle, snakes it heartily up and down, exclaiming the while, “Excuse me, my friend—er—will you take anything?” Banal to a degree, I quite admit. But Lord! how often have I roared over the words, and to how many of my own day who read this page do they not recall an ineffaceable and delightful recollection—an they would but acknowledge it. I hate to apply the money test as a standard by which to measure the value of artistic work. In many instances it is no test at all. The artistic charlatan sometimes amasses a fortune. But this does not hold so literally with the actor who has to appeal in person to patrons drawn from all classes of society. In his case the making of a fortune must surely be a reliable test of the possession of the real sort of genius. Clarke in a very few years in London made a fortune, purchased the lease of the Haymarket, and retired from his profession into private life without any formal leave-taking. Years after I first roared over his impersonations, I was introduced to him in a little hotel in one of the streets—Surrey Street, or another—close to the old Strand Theatre. Here the merry-maker was in the habit of sitting alone. He was the most moody, melancholy, shy, and reticent person with whom I had up to that time become acquainted. There was no slightest trace of the spontaneous, irrepressible, and irresistible fun which seemed to possess him when he made his welcome entrances on the stage. I met him many times afterwards. I made a point of meeting him. The desire to understand the problem presented obsessed me. But I found him always the same—polite in a grave way, willing to converse to the extent of answering a question or passing a shy opinion when it was challenged. But he made no jokes, told no anecdotes, indulged in no reminiscence. Others who knew him told me the same tale of him. In the roaring Strand John Sleeper Clarke was as much a recluse as though he lived in a hut in the depths of a forest.