Candidly, if you were to ask me what I think of amateur acting generally, and charades in peculiar, I should tell you that in my opinion there is a very considerable compartment down below devoted exclusively to this peculiar form of torment. There the amateurs will do great things on a fiery stage; and the misguided people who have encouraged them during this life must make up their minds to sit solidly in red-hot stalls, without backs, through an eternity of indifferent acting. It is a source of satisfaction to me that I only helped to perform one charade in my life--which I ruined. And yet it seems rough to be jubilant about it, because that particular entertainment did two really great things for me--one in the little affair of Millicent Warne, the other touching Greensmith. You don’t know Greensmith? Thank God for it; but let the thought that he still lives, and is loose, and may on some occasion cross your own path, chasten you when you are going strong and feel inclined to get above yourself. The time of these events being Christmas, I will not say what I think of Greensmith here, but merely hint that he is the smallest man and the biggest hound that ever cast a black spell on a pleasant party. His conceit is gigantic, his manners are loathsome, his ancestry runs into a Jew pedlar in the second generation and stops there. He has more opinions and less information than a Board School teacher. He is, moreover, a worm, and also a bounder. He lies, and he would break all the ten commandments every week of his life had he the pluck to do so. But if he may be allowed a strong point, it is cowardice. He wears an eyeglass with difficulty, waxes the points of an indifferent moustache, sports a red tie by day, diamonds by night, and is, to conclude, within the bounds of charity, the most unutterably deplorable parody of a human being that Nature ever turned out during a moment of weakness. So much for a mere judicial summary of Greensmith. If you want my private opinion concerning him, you can have it when this present blessed season of peace and good will has passed into limbo. I can’t blackguard a man at Christmas-time.