‘You have missed your vocation in life; you ought to have been an actor, or a writer for the _Daily Telegraph_,’ so I was assured by an eminent professor of phrenology. The professor had expressed a wish to meet all the London police court missionaries, with a view of ascertaining their fitness or unfitness for the position they hold. Mine was the last head he measured. He had passed all my colleagues, and had found no unfitness among them. Not being sure of my fitness, I waited till last; but when all had been declared good men and true, I submitted myself to his tape and measurements with some confidence. I wished afterwards that I had taken the precedence to which my age and length of service entitled me. Now, I knew very well that as a missionary I had often made a fool of myself. I knew much better than the professor my unfitness for the work, for, gracious me! it has knocked me out of time too often for me not to have realized it. Still, I was a bit nettled when I found that I was the only one in a wrong place. I had not even the comfort of a partner in distress; but I recovered from the shock, and comforted myself with the thought that they must be a splendid lot of men when I was the worst among them. Yet it gave me pause. What if he were right? Fifteen years I had been blundering among poor humanity, hoping and fearing, racking my brains, never knowing when to give in, though often lifeless from the expenditure of nervous energy. Fifteen years I had been realizing that I could only move others to the extent I felt for them, and that there is no healing without loss of virtue. What if the professor were right? It troubled me, for I thought of the poor, the unfortunate, the downcast, and the heterogeneous mass of humanity one meets with in our London police courts. Some other fellows might have done them so much more good, might have comforted more broken hearts, and might have ‘rescued’ in a wholesale fashion what time I had been peddling and meddling with solitary individuals. Still, I felt I had done my best, and I knew that there were eyes that brightened when I looked into them; I knew that I had made some little ones happy, that I had strengthened some despairing wretches, and had helped in some degree to lift the great burden of sorrow that presses upon the human heart; and besides, was there not the delicate compliment conveyed that I might have been an Irving or a Toole, or--ecstatic thought!--a writer for the _Daily Telegraph_? I began to think the professor was right, and though I had never been in a theatre till I had passed my fortieth birthday, I felt I had dramatic instincts and a relish for comedy.