And I think that the little world in which I and my brother enthusiasts delight is all the more appreciated when we understand that it, too, is beset with its anxieties and grievous disappointments, and is far from the dazzling, soul-soothing elysium we pictured in the halcyon days of our boyhood. Our hearts go out all the more freely to the actors and actresses who warm them when we realise that they, too, have their trials as well as their triumphs. Our admiration is redoubled when it is leavened with sympathy. It is all the more important, then, that our entertainers should know that this feeling exists among those for whom they devote the work of their lives. The artistic temperament is always more or less self-tormenting, and it is to be feared that my "little world," which shines so brightly over our great one, where sorrow has daily to be met and borne, is in itself a sorely troubled one. In that strange French play which has our great English tragedian, Edmund Kean, for its central figure, Alexandre Dumas, who knew everything that could be known about the theatre, caused his actor-hero to respond bitterly to the woman who loved him, and who opined that all his troubles must vanish when he reflects that he is recognised as the King of the Stage. "King! Yes, three times a week! King with a tinselled sceptre, paste diamonds, and a pinchbeck crown. I rule a kingdom of thirty-five feet, and subjects who are jealous of my power." Then, when she asks, "Why do you not give it up?" he replies with indignation, "Give up the stage? Ah! you don't realise that he who has once donned the robe of Nessus cannot take it off without lacerating his flesh. _I_ give up the stage?--renounce its excitement?--its glitter?--its triumphs? _I_ give up my throne to another? Never! while I've health and strength to walk the boards, and brains to interpret the poetry I love. Remember, an actor cannot leave his work behind him. He lives only in his own lifetime--his memory fades with the generation to which he belongs, he must finish as he has begun, die as he has lived--die, if fortune favours him, with the delicious sound of applause in his ears. But those who have not set foot upon a dangerous path do well to avoid it." The actor's complaint that his fame, however great, cannot be recollected many years beyond the time in which he lived is a very old one, and it must have been with this mournful view in his mind that David Garrick wrote:-- "The painter dead, yet still he charms the eye; While England lives his fame can never die. But he who struts his hour upon the stage Can scarce extend his fame for half an age; Nor pen nor pencil can the actor save, The art and artist share one common grave."