But being fixed in a dull country town for about six months at a stretch, with no other recreation than a game of cards, or a gossip in an inn parlor, I didn’t find at all pleasant. To the staid, or to the married members, I daresay it was satisfactory enough. They had, some of them, been born in the company, and had been married in the company, and they hoped to die in the company. They were known throughout the circuit. They took an interest in the towns, and the towns took an interest in them, and came to their benefits. They returned again and again to the same lodgings. There was no fear of their forgetting where they lived, as sometimes happened to a touring actor on his first day in a new town. They were not unknown vagabonds wandering houseless from place to place; they were citizens and townsmen, living among their friends and relations. Every stick of furniture-in their rooms was familiar to them. Their lodgings were not mere furnished apartments, but “home,” or as near to a home as a country player could ever expect to get No doubt they, as madame would have said, “did love the sleepiness”; but I, an energetic young bachelor, found it “oh! so sad.” Sad as I might have thought it, though, I stayed there five months, during which time I seem to have written an immense number of letters to the long-suffering Jim. All that is worth recording here, however, is contained in the following extracts: “.....The work is not so hard now. It was very stiff at first, as we changed the bill about every other night, but I got hold of the _répertoire_ and studied up all the parts I knew I should have to play. It still comes heavy when there is a benefit, especially when anything modern is put up, as, then, having a good wardrobe, I generally get cast for the ‘gentlemanly party,’ and that is always a lengthy part. But what makes it still more difficult, is the way everybody gags. Nobody speaks by the book here. They equivocate, and then I am undone. I never know where I am. The other day, I had a particularly long part given me to play the next evening. I stayed up nearly all night over it. At rehearsal in the morning, the light comedy, with whom I was principally concerned, asked me how I’d got on. ‘Well, I think I shall know something about it,’ I answered. ‘At all events, I’ve got the cues perfect.’ ‘Oh! don’t bother yourself about cues,’ replied he cheerfully. ‘You won’t get a blessed cue from me. I use my own words now. Just you look out for the sense.’ “I did look out for the sense, but I’ll be hanged if I could see any in what he said. There was no doubt as to the words being his own. How I got through with it I don’t know. He helped me with suggestions when I stuck, such as: ‘Go on, let off your bit about a father,’ or ‘Have you told me what Sarah said?’