During the acting it was quite plain that the actors themselves were as much interested as those who witnessed the play. 'I was fairly shamed of myself,' I heard one saying, 'to meet with ye when I came off the last time, for the tears on my face, but if you had given me a five pound note I could not have helped it.' Ah, thought I, that was the secret of {85} your acting so well. Now and again an actor in undress would pass down the room to have a look at the others as they performed their parts, and to report. They would come back with much encouragement to their fellow-players with such words as these: 'Eh, but it's a grand company now, and walls is beginning to stream now'; and in truth the heat of the room and the consequent vapour bath was a thing not to be easily forgotten. But if it had been twice as hot, and the hall had been twice as crammed, and the play had been twice as long, one could still have sat with real pleasure to see such perfect acting done with such simplicity and reality to the life. One wished that Will Shakspere could have come along; how he would have blessed these village folk for their truth and their simplicity. And how good a thing, thought I, it is, that there should be a dull time at the English Lakes, so that, without any temptations to extravagance in scenery or setting of the plays--that would inevitably come with a wider public,--these natural dale-folk can delight their fellow-villagers, by dramatic talent as real as it is remarkable. {86} JAMES CROPPER OF ELLERGREEN. The pattern life of a public-spirited country gentleman closed, when James Cropper of Ellergreen, with eye undimmed and natural force unabated, entered rest. Come of an old Viking stock,--for his name is found in the _Landnama Bok of Iceland_,--he had inherited the best traditions of true philanthropy from his grandfather, who, with Zachary Macaulay, had worked for the emancipation of the slave. In him, too, ran something of the spirit of good old Quaker blood. Whole-hearted Churchman as he was, he loved as the Friends love, simplicity in form and directness in religious expression. In earliest days he had cared for social and industrial problems, and the sorrows of the labouring poor entered into his heart. It was his good fortune to be able, by becoming an employer of labour, in his paper mills at {87} Burneside, to face these problems and to become, as he always wished to become, the father rather than the master of his workmen.