While thus most conscientiously discharging his office duties and seeking to improve others, he was hard at work after business hours in self-improvement and in fitting himself for his future career on the stage. He was a frequent attendant at the Old Sadler’s Wells Theatre and often stood for more than an hour at the door in order to secure one particular corner seat in the pit, where he could watch every emotion in the face of Phelps, especially in his Shakespearean parts. His other method was to practise himself in the art of elocution by inviting his relatives and friends to some large rooms placed at his disposal by his father and mother and entertain them by reading a play through, or with a selection of recitations. His favourite play for such occasions was the _Lady of Lyons_, although he more than once read through (somewhat “cut”) one of Shakespeare’s dramas. His two recitations most impressed on the mind after fifty years were _Eugene Aram_ and _Skying the Copper_, evidencing as they undoubtedly did both his remarkable tragic and comic powers. As showing his thoroughness even then in small matters, his “make up” for the servant girl in the latter piece has never been forgotten by one who helped him to rouge his bare arms to the proper red tint for a “slavey’s.” The efforts he afterwards so constantly made to place the stage in what he considered its proper position in the country and its education—as witness his last speech in favour of a Municipal theatre—were really begun when still in his “teens.” A young friend had promised to open a discussion on his suggestion at a literary debating society on the question of the moral effect of theatrical representations and sought his aid in forming his arguments in their favour. He at once took a great deal of trouble, giving him many authorities and writing out long quotations in favour of the educational value of the stage when properly conducted; in fact, composing a good half of the paper subsequently read. In 1856 he could no longer endure the privation of being kept away from the profession for which his inner consciousness told him he was fitted. As an illustration of the errors of judgment clever men may make, his old employer went to see him at Manchester some time after he left Newgate Street, and wrote to his son: “We went to see Brodribb and did not think much of him; he would have done much better to keep to his stool in Newgate Street.” This use of his old name brings to remembrance the fact that the name he made famous was not the first he thought of adopting: indeed he had cards printed with an entirely different one, J. Hy. Barringtone. The decision for “Irving” was a sudden one and was made known to a friend in a short note saying, “I have decided that the name shall be Irving”; but for some years after this he continued to sign his notes “J. H. B.” to his family and friends.