It would be, however, an endless, exhausting, and uninteresting task to pursue my friends the players through their various theatres. The easier way is to catch them during their hours of relaxation in their clubs and in their pubs. The billiard-room of the Junior Garrick between half-past eleven at night and two in the morning was a covert always successfully drawn by those in search of theatrical game. Pool and pyramids were the games most in vogue, but more especially pool. Here you were sure of encountering “Jimmy” Fernandez (I never knew an actor, however sedate and inaccessible, who, being christened “James,” was not called “Jimmy” by his confrères), a devoted exponent with the cue; H. B. Farnie was rarely absent. He was a great hulking Scotsman with a slight limp, of which he hated to be reminded. He had originally been a medical student at Edinburgh. John Clarke, of the Adelphi—no relation to John Sleeper Clarke—was another of this coterie. He was a fine comic and character actor. He was the husband of Miss Furtado, a favourite Adelphi actress of the time. He played with unvarying success under many managements, including that of the Bancrofts, was of a grumbling disposition, and was known as Lame Clarke, to distinguish him from the other John Clarke—Sleeper of that ilk—lower down the Strand. Clarence Holt, the tragedian, greatly fancied himself at the game of billiards, and had succeeded in cutting more billiard-cloths than any man living. Clarence Holt (his real name was Jo) was a barn-stormer of the old school; and although in general conversation he scowled, and made use of weird expletives, he was as good-hearted a fellow as ever lived. At the Saturday house-dinners of the club he invariably gave a recitation of “The Old Clock on the Stairs,” and always accepted with a sort of condescending and regal dignity the ironical cheers which it invariably evoked. His mingling of oaths with endearing epithets was one of the quaintest things in the world. “How is Miss Holt?” one would ask. “Oh, the dear, darling, bally little idiot—she’s well, dear boy, well!”