with the Walking Lady and the property jewels; and the First Old Man would die of a broken heart. What the manager would do on the second night I don’t know. If he opened at all, I suppose he would go in front and explain matters by saying: “‘Ladies and Gentlemen,--I must apologize for the incompleteness with which the play will be presented to you this evening. The truth is, the performance last night was so realistic all round, that there is only the Low Comedy and a General Utility left. But we’ve a good many corpses about the theater, and with these, and the assistance of the two gentlemen mentioned, we will do what we can.’ “Even when studying in one’s own room, one cannot for a moment lose sight of one’s identity. A great actor, creating a character, doesn’t forget he’s himself, and think he’s somebody else. It’s only lunatics who have those fancies. But he is a man of such vast sympathy that he can understand and enter into all human thoughts and feelings; and, having pictured to himself the character of the man he wishes to represent, he can follow the workings of that supposed man’s mind under all possible circumstances. “But even this sympathy must be left outside the theater doors. Once inside, the mind must be kept clear of all distracting thought. What is gone through on the stage is merely an exact repetition of what is conceived in the study, and a cool head and a good memory are the only reliable servants when once the curtain is up. Of course a man should _feel_ what he is acting. Feeling is the breath of acting. It is to the actor what Aphrodite’s gift was to Pygmalion--it gives life to his statue. But this feeling is as much a matter of memory as the rest. The actual stage is too artificial for emotion to come to one naturally while there. Each passion is assumed and dropped by force of will, together with the words and action which accompany it. “...I made a sensation here last Tuesday. I was playing the very part in which our Walking Gentleman met with his accident, and he was playing the villain, who tries to stab me while I am asleep. (The Heavy Man has left. He went soon after he had done the mischief.) Well, everything had gone very smoothly so far, and I was lying there on the couch at the back of the darkened stage, and he was leaning over me with the knife in his hand. I was quite still, waiting for my cue to awake, and wondering if I could manage to start up quickly, when I raised my eyes and caught sight of R----‘s face. I may have done him an injustice. His expression may have been mere acting. The whole idea was, perhaps, due to nothing but my own imagination. I have thought this since. At the time it flashed across me: ‘He means to revenge himself on me for having taken his place. He is going to disfigure me just as he was disfigured.’ In an instant I sprung up and wrested the knife from his hand.