When he was at last offered an engagement as a music-hall singer, he naturally hesitated at taking a step which he rightly regarded as irrevocable. He recognized the fact that his acceptance meant a renunciation of the theatre. And to his profession—hard mistress though she had been—he was deeply attached. I was one of those friends to whom he repaired for advice over what appeared to him a momentous issue. I am glad to recall the fact that I strongly advised him to take the plunge. Nor was I ever in doubt as to the success of his songs with an audience even then emerging from under the spell of the raucous and “rawty” comiques. A number of us went to the Pavilion to witness his début. We had scattered ourselves all over the hall—it was the new building, and not the stuffy old hole of the seventies—and we were prepared to act as an unsalaried claque. But our services were never needed. With great judgment, Chevalier had selected as his first song “The Coster’s Serenade.” It went home at once. The delicacy of the art appealed alike to stalls and gallery. This refinement of treatment was novel. It was something like a revelation to the “gods.” The song went with a will. And Chevalier’s fortune was assured. We who had attended as unpaid and unwanted claquers were not without a vocation, after all. We were watchers at the parting of the ways. The old music-hall of the Great Vances and the Bessie Bellwoods was passing away. The new order of the Fragsons and the Margaret Coopers was imminent. It is difficult, in tracing the course of any evolution, to attribute exactly the dates of transition, or to assign scientifically the contributing causes of change. But I think that one would not be far from the truth in attributing to three causes the wonderful improvement which has taken place in music-hall conditions and entertainments in the course of a generation. In the first place, the erection of more modern, more pretentious, and more comfortable buildings on the ruins of the ancient pest-houses almost necessitated a performance from which should be eliminated the more objectionable features of the old pothouse programme. In the second place, due importance should be given to the persistent efforts of managers of the Charles Morton school, who, foreseeing the possibilities of the variety show, cherished high ideals, but cherished them on strictly business lines. In the third place, one must allow something for an improvement in public taste. This factor is—for reasons which I cannot discuss here—the least potent. But it is far from being negligible. It is a case, indeed, in which the supply created the demand, not where the demand created the supply.