I was too much hurt about the insult offered Mr. Wilson Barrett and myself to go and see him act again for a long time; but other theatres demanded my attention because I was now a regular student of the drama and didn’t like to miss anything. Sometimes I went alone and sometimes I got a clerk from the Apollo to go with me. But none of them much cared about legitimate drama. I was already deeply in love, in a far-distant and hopeless sort of way, with Miss Ellen Terry, and when there came a first night at the Lyceum Theatre, I resolved to be present in the pit. I told Aunt Augusta not to expect me at dinner-time, but she was well used to this and said she wouldn’t. So the moment that I was free from my appointed task I flew off to the Lyceum pit door and took my place. I was, however, by no means the first to arrive. A crowd had already collected and I found myself among that hardy and famous race of men and women known as “first-nighters.” There were even youngish girls in the crowd, for one stood near me reading the _Merchant of Venice_, which was the play we had all come to see. Luckily for the girl a gas-lamp hung over her head and she was thus enabled to read the play and pass the time. Like a fool I had brought nothing, yet it was enough amusement and instruction for me to be among so many regular professional “first-nighters”; and I listened with great interest to their deep knowledge of the subject. Five or six men of all ages evidently knew one another, and they were talking about a little book that had just been written on Mr. Henry Irving by Mr. William Archer. It was a very startling book—the very one, in fact, that I was going to buy at the bookstall when the shady customer pretended he was Mr. Martin Tupper. It was a small book with rather a grim picture of Mr. Henry Irving on the outside, and I found that these old hands of the stage did not altogether approve of the book and thought parts of it rather strong coming from Mr. Archer to Mr. Irving. “He says that Irving is half a woman,” said a grey man. “Now that’s going too far, in my opinion.” “I know what he’s driving at,” answered a young man with a very intellectual face. “You see, every artist has got to be man, woman, and child rolled into one. Every great artist has to have the imagination and power of feeling and fellow-feeling to identify himself with every other sort of possible person. If you can’t do that, you can’t be a first-class actor. That’s where Irving beats Barrett into a cocked hat—temperament and power of imagination. Irving could act anything—from Richard the Third to an infant in arms; Barrett could not.”