I recollect one of the scene-shifters at His Majesty’s Theatre putting his shoulder out at a rehearsal and Joe taking him to hospital himself; I should never have known of it but that the man’s quaint expression of gratitude--“Your gentlemanly conduct, sir, I never shall forget”--so pleased Joe that he had to repeat it to me. The humours of these people always delighted him, and I can see his mock-grave face as he told me of the head stage-carpenter’s refusal to carry out an order because it was the day upon which: “We’re all subservient to Mr. Telbin”--an excuse which Joe, knowing that irascible scene-painter’s peculiarities--found sufficient. No memories are pleasanter to me than those of presentations to us by these working folk. I have a little Old English silver waiter, an inscribed gift from the employés at the Comedy Theatre for our silver wedding; and a ponderous marble clock, also touchingly inscribed, which the foreman of the stage-hands in the Lyceum Company presented to Joe in the library of our Kensington house. The man stood in the centre of the room making a speech, but before it was ended nature prevailed and he concluded hastily: “If I don’t set it down somewhere I shall let it drop.” Joe had given instructions to our maid to pay the donor’s cab, and when he retired and found it gone, we were all in dismay upon learning that he had left his overcoat in it. Anecdotes of entertainments in the higher circles of the stage Joe has told himself in his two books of Reminiscences, the most notable of them being Henry Irving’s splendid reception to the Rajahs, when the stage and stalls of the Lyceum were transformed into one vast flower-garden in half an hour after the fall of the curtain. But I can add my testimony as to memorable evenings spent at His Majesty’s Theatre and at Sir Henry Irving’s supper-table in the “Old Beefsteak Room” of the Lyceum Theatre, when I listened proudly to Joe’s brilliant talk or speeches, and was sometimes privileged to act as interpreter between the host and the many distinguished foreigners who graced that board. Liszt, Joachim, Sarasate are names which recur to me among them as musicians; but, of course, the guests were chiefly actors and actresses, flattered, I think, at the fine welcome from the foremost English Manager. Booth, Mary Anderson, Mansfield were the foremost Americans, to the latter of whom I remember Irving’s grim advice _à propos_ of the fatigue of a ventriloquist-voice in a gruesome part: “If it’s unwholesome I should do it some other way.” Jane Hading, Coquelin, Réjane and, of course, the incomparable Sarah Bernhardt represented the French; and I think Salvini was the only one from the stage of Italy.