The mechanism of the modern hall is a marvellous thing. From the small offices about Leicester Square, where the big circuits are registered, men and women and children are sent thousands and thousands of miles to sing, dance, act, or play the fool. The circuits often control thirty or forty halls in London and the provinces, each of which is under the care of a manager, who is responsible for its success. The turns are booked by the central booking manager and allocated either to this or that London hall, or to work the entire syndicate tour; and the bill of each hall, near or far, is printed and stage-times fixed weeks in advance. The local manager every Saturday night has to pay his entire staff, both stage and house; that is, he not only pays programme girls, chuckers-out, electricians, and so forth, but each artist, even the L200 a week man, is paid in cash at each hall he is working. When a new turn is booked for any given hall, the manager of that hall must be "in front" and watch that turn and its success or non-success with the house; and, at the end of the week, a confidential report has to be sent to headquarters in which the manager tells the cold truth: whether the show is good, whether it "went," how much salary it is worth, and whether it is worth a re-booking. It is, like journalism, a hard, hard life and thankless for every one concerned, from bill-topper to sweeper; yet there is a furious colour about it, and I think no one connected with it would willingly quit. The most hard-worked of all are the electricians. First in the hall of an evening, they, with the band and the janitors, are the last to leave. Following them, at about half-past five (in the case of the two-houses halls), come programme girls, barmaids, call-boy, stage-manager, shifters, and all other stage hands. All are philosophers, in their way, and all seem to have caught the tang of the profession and to be, subconsciously, of the mummer persuasion. I once had a long, long talk with the chief electrician of a London hall, or, to give him the name by which he is best known, the limelight man. I climbed the straight iron ladder from the wings to his little platform, with only sufficient foothold for two people, and there I stood with him for two hours, while he waggled spots, floods, and focuses, and littered the platform with the hastily scrawled lighting-plots of the performers.