At dinners and meetings he often glides into lively recollections of his early days, related in an unaffected style, as when, not long since, he told his lieges at Bristol: “My recollections of Bristol carry me back to the days when my father told me stirring tales of the great Bristol Riots, which had brought him the honours of a special constable. I think I wanted to grow up to be a special constable too, and I had great hopes that Bristol would kindly become sufficiently riotous to favour that ambition. But I also had a turn for natural history, and it is indelibly stamped upon my memory that on one occasion, when I was about four years old, I made a little excursion by myself from St. James’s Barton to Redcliffe Street in order to study a stag’s head which projected as a sign from a certain house, where I was found by my anxious mother peacefully contemplating the head of the antlered beast and wondering why on earth he smelt so strongly of tallow. It was soon after this incident that I witnessed a great event in the history of Bristol, the launching of the steamship _Great Britain_. There was a vast throng of people to see this mighty vessel, but the one thing which monopolized my attention was the moustache of Prince Albert, who presided over the ceremony. I was fired by an unquenchable longing to possess a similar ornament, and I consulted a friend of mine, a chemist, who kept a particular brand of acid-drops which I patronized at that time, and who consented to make a moustache for me. It was a long business, and when I impatiently inquired how it was getting on, he used to explain that he was growing it somewhere at the back of his shop. Well, one day I demanded it with an imperious energy which was not to be resisted, so he put me on a chair and adorned my upper lip with burnt cork, with which I went home feeling much elated, though a little disturbed by the demonstrations of the juvenile public on the way. I have sometimes wondered whether it was that burnt cork—the earliest of the rites in honour of Thespis—which gave my career the bent that has brought me among you to-day. If my distinguished colleague, Miss Ellen Terry, were here, she could tell you many stories of the Bristol Theatre, in which I may almost say she was cradled.” * * * * *