The Quarter is also within an easy stroll for actors who, when their hard times come, show an unwarranted confidence in us, though J., if anything, disdains the theatre more than the opera. They take advantage of their training and bring the artist's zeal to the role of Beggars, but I have known them to be shocked back suddenly into their natural selves by J.'s blunt refusal to hear them out. One, giving the aristocratic name of Mr. Vivian Stewart and further describing himself on his card as "Lead Character late of the Lyceum," was so dismayed when J. cut his lines short with a shilling that he lost his cue entirely and whined, "Don't you think, sir, you could make it eighteenpence?" The most accomplished in the role was a young actor from York. He had the intelligence to suspect that _the_ profession does not monopolize the interest of all the world and to pretend that it did not monopolize his own. He therefore appeared in the double part of cyclist and actor. He reminded J. of a cycling dinner at York several winters before at which both were present. J. remembered the dinner, but not the cyclist, who was not a bit put out but declaimed upon "the freemasonry of the wheel," and anticipated J.'s joy as fellow sportsman in hearing of the new engagement just offered to him. It would be the making of him and his reputation, but--no bad luck has ever yet robbed our Beggars of that useful preposition--_but_, it depended upon his leaving London within an hour, and the usual events over which our Beggars never have control, found him with ten shillings less than his railway fare. A loan at this critical point would save his career, and to-morrow the money would be returned. His visit dates back to the early period, when our hospitality had not out-grown the barbarous stage, and his career was saved, temporarily. After six months' silence, the actor reappeared. With his first word of greeting he took a half sovereign from his waistcoat pocket and regretted his delay in paying it back. _But_, in the mean while, much had happened. He had lost his promising engagement; he had found a wife and was on the point of losing her, for she was another of the many wives at death's door; he had found a more promising engagement and was on the point of losing that too, for if he did not settle his landlady's bill before the afternoon had passed she would seize his possessions, stage properties and all, and again events beyond his control had emptied his pockets. He would return the ten shillings, _but_ we must now lend him a sovereign. And he was not merely surprised but deeply hurt because we would not, and he stayed to argue it out that if his wife died, and his landlady kept his possessions, and the engagement was broken, and his career was at an end, the guilt would be ours,--it was in our power to make him or to mar him. He was really rather good at denunciation. On this occasion it was wasted. He did not