Reticence is not usually the characteristic note of the actor. Of all the companionships that I formed during my Press experiences, none were so enjoyable as those I made on the stage. There are, of course, some pompous asses among them. But you will find these in all callings. And the pompous mummer was never the most successful one. As a rule, the more distinguished and gifted the actor, the more genial and accessible he is. The players are full of amusing early experiences, which they relate with delightful candour. Actors’ stories are, as a rule, well told, and are worth telling. Nor is this extraordinary. Making points off the stage should be very good practice for making points on it. There were two classes of raconteur in my day. The one was the reminiscent or quasi-historical man; the other was the simple retailer of good stories. Of the former class the two finest examples were John Ryder and John Coleman. Of the latter were Lionel Brough and Arthur Williams. I should not have used the past tense in alluding to Arthur Williams, who, I am happy to know, is alive and well, and still entertaining a public in whose smiles he has basked for many years. My first introduction to Lionel Brough—“Lal,” as he was always affectionately called—was at Covent Garden, where he was stage-manager during the career of that costly experiment “Babil and Bijou.” The late Lord Londesborough was a determined supporter of the stage, a great friend of actors—and actresses—and a generous contributor to theatrical charities. His lordship financed the Covent Garden Opera House when it was taken by Miss Fowler. Boucicault did the play—a sort of pantomime, we should call it to-day—with processions, and ballets, and comic relief, and popular songs, and all the rest of it. There was an army of Amazons, headed by the statuesque Helen Barry, who had started her artistic career in a cigar-shop in Piccadilly. The armour of these ladies cost no end of money, being very beautiful and substantial. A few weeks since I met a manager—a provincial manager—in the North who informed me that some of the properties and armour made for “Babil and Bijou” were being taken round the country by fifth-rate travelling companies to this day.