hope they're cutting out the last act_!" The last act was not cut out, but it did not save the already foundering play, and the part in which Ellen Terry had been intended to shine (she did not appear in it) flickered out. But her engagement in Tottenham Street will ever be remembered by her first appearance as Portia, and to the Bancrofts we owe her introduction to one of her greatest parts. "How I loved playing Portia," she has said. "I have tried five or six different ways of treating her. Unfortunately, the way I think the _best_ way does not find response with my audiences." Be that as it may, she continues to play Portia in a way that her critics as well as friends deem the best, and assuredly it requires no alteration. May she thus go on playing it for many a year to come! CHAPTER VIII IN SLOANE SQUARE At this time the Bancrofts' old and well loved comrade, John Hare, was acting and managing in friendly rivalry with them at the original Court Theatre in Sloane Square. In 1876, the Kendals, having concluded a most prosperous season with him, left to fulfil an engagement in Tottenham Street, and he secured the services of Ellen Terry, whose husband, Charles Kelly, was already serving under his banner. Before he went to fulfil his first engagement in America, John Hare entrusted me with the task of writing his biography, and, apart from my own observations of them, I became very well acquainted with the history of the series of plays in which Ellen Terry appeared in the dainty Chelsea playhouse. Her first venture in her new home was as Kate Hungerford, in an original comedy by Charles Coghlan, entitled "Brothers," of which great things were expected. The cast included John Hare, Charles Kelly, H. B. Conway (one of the handsomest young actors of his day), G. W. Anson (a born comedian), Miss Bessie Hollingshead (the pretty and gifted daughter of the valiant and erudite John Hollingshead), and the always delightful Mrs. Gaston Murray. It was a cleverly written play, and the acting had the _ensemble_ that John Hare had striven so hard and so successfully to impart, but it did not "draw the town," and it was very speedily succeeded by a revival of Tom Taylor and A. W. Dubourg's charming comedy, "New Men and Old Acres," in which Ellen Terry played the part created by Mrs. Kendal on the original production of the piece at the Haymarket Theatre, and Hare followed Chippendale as Vavasour. By all concerned this was so beautifully performed, and by the indefatigable actor-manager so perfectly stage-managed, that solid and lasting success was assured. The good work that was being done was generously as well as generally recognised, and the critical _Athenæum_ spoke for the public when it said:--