HEY charged me extra for the basket on the Great Eastern Line, and I have hated that company ever since. Of course it was over weight, but actors are good customers to the railways, and a little excess luggage is not, as a rule, too closely inquired into. The myrmidons at Bishopsgate, however, were inexorable. It was in vain I tried to persuade them that the thing was “as light as a feather.” They insisted on sticking it up edgeways on a shaky iron plate, and wobbling something up and down a bar; afterward giving me an absurd bit of paper with “4s. 4d.” on it, which, I explained, I didn’t want, but which they charged me for just as though I had specially ordered it. My destination was a small market-town in the eastern counties, where I arrived about mid-day. It was the most dead and alive place I have ever been to. All eastern county towns are more or less dead and alive--particularly the former--but this one was dreariness personified. Not a soul was to be seen outside the station. In the yard stood a solitary cab to which was attached a limp horse that, with head hanging down and knees bent out, looked the picture of resigned misery; but the driver had disappeared--washed away by the rain, perhaps, which was pouring steadily down. I left my belongings in the cloak room, and walked straight to the theater. I passed two or three green posters on my way, headed: “Theater Royal,” and setting forth that “------ --------, the World-Renowned Tragedian from Drury Lane,” would give his magnificent impersonations of _Richard III._ and _The Idiot Witness_ that night, and begging the inhabitants, for their own sakes, to “come early.” I found the whole company assembled on the stage, and looking as dismal as the town itself. They all had colds in the head, including the manager, “the World-Renowned Tragedian from Drury Lane,” who had the face-ache into the bargain. After a rough and ready rehearsal of the tragedy, melodrama, and burlesque to be played that evening (I had had all my parts sent me by post before joining), I started off by myself to look for lodgings, as I had come to the conclusion that my own society would, on the whole, be less depressing than that of any gentleman in the company.