We were at luncheon when Fussie made his debut into the family circle, and I very quickly saw that his _stomach_ was his fault. He had a great dislike to "Charles I.," we could never make out why. Perhaps it was because Henry wore armour in one act--and Fussie may have barked his shins against it. Perhaps it was the firing off of big guns. But more probably it was because the play once got him into trouble. As a rule, Fussie had the most wonderful sense of the stage, and at rehearsal would skirt the edge of it, but never cross it. But at Brooklyn one night when we were playing "Charles I.," the last act, and that most pathetic part of it where Charles is taking a last farewell of his wife and children, Fussie, perhaps excited by his run over the bridge from New York, suddenly bounded on to the stage! The good children who were playing Princess Mary and Prince Henry didn't even smile; the audience remained solemn; but Henry and I nearly went into hysterics. Fussie knew directly that he had done wrong. He lay down on his stomach, then rolled over on his back, a whimpering apology, while carpenters kept on whistling and calling to him from the wings. The children took him up to the window at the back of the scene, and he stayed there cowering between them until the end of the play. America seems to have been always fatal to Fussie. Another time when Henry and I were playing in some charity performance in which John Drew and Maude Adams were also acting, he disgraced himself again. Henry having "done his bit" and put on hat and coat to leave the theatre, Fussie thought the end of the performance must have come; the stage had no further sanctity for him, and he ran across it to the stage door barking! John Drew and Maude Adams were playing "A Pair of Lunatics." Maude Adams, sitting looking into the fire, did not see Fussie, but was amazed to hear John Drew departing madly from the text: "Is this a dog I see before me, His tail towards my hand? Come, let me clutch thee." She began to think he had really gone mad! [Illustration: _From the collection of Robert Coster_ AUGUSTIN DALY AND HIS COMPANY OF PLAYERS ADA REHAN, MRS. GILBERT, AND JOHN DREW FORM THE GROUP DIRECTLY FACING DALY] When Fussie first came, Charlie was still alive, and I have often gone into Henry's dressing-room and seen the two dogs curled up in both the available chairs, Henry _standing_ while he made up, rather than disturb them! When Charlie died, Fussie had Henry's idolatry all to himself. I have caught them often sitting quietly opposite each other at Grafton Street, just adoring each other. Occasionally Fussie would thump his tail on the ground to express his pleasure. _Irving's Strategy_