“Perhaps the most remarkable Christmas dinner at which I have ever been present was the one at which we dined upon underclothing. Do you remember Joe Robins—a nice genial fellow who played small parts in the provinces? Ah, no; that was before your time. Joe Robins was once in the gentleman’s furnishing business in London city. I think he had a wholesale trade, and was doing well. However, he belonged to one of the semi-Bohemian clubs, associated a great deal with actors and journalists, and when an amateur performance was organized for some charitable object, he was cast for the clown in a burlesque called ‘Guy Fawkes.’ He determined to go upon the stage professionally and become a great actor. Fortunately, Joe was able to dispose of his stock and goodwill for a few hundreds, which he invested so as to give him an income sufficient to prevent the wolf from getting inside his door in case he did not eclipse Garrick, Kean, and Kemble. He also packed up for himself a liberal supply of his wares, and started in his profession with enough shirts, collars, handkerchiefs, stockings, and underclothing to equip him for several years. “The amateur success of poor Joe was never repeated on the regular stage. He did not make an absolute failure; no manager would entrust him with parts big enough for him to fail in. But he drifted down to general utility, and then out of London, and when I met him he was engaged in a very small way, on a very small salary, at a Manchester theatre. “Christmas came in very bitter weather. Joe had a part in the Christmas pantomime. He dressed with other poor actors, and he saw how thinly some of them were clad when they stripped before him to put on their stage costumes. For one poor fellow in especial his heart ached. In the depth of a very cold winter he was shivering in a suit of very light summer underclothing, and whenever Joe looked at him, the warm flannel undergarments snugly packed away in an extra trunk weighed heavily on his mind. Joe thought the matter over, and determined to give the actors who dressed with him a Christmas dinner. It was literally a dinner upon underclothing, for most of the shirts and drawers which Joe had cherished so long went to the pawnbroker’s or the slop-shop to provide the money for the meal. The guests assembled promptly, for nobody else is ever so hungry as a hungry actor. The dinner was to be served at Joe’s lodgings, and before it was placed on the table, Joe beckoned his friend with the gauze underclothing into a bedroom, and pointing to a chair, silently withdrew. On that chair hung a suit of underwear, which had been Joe’s pride. It was of a comfortable scarlet colour; it was thick, warm, and heavy; it fitted the poor actor as if it had been manufactured especially to his measure. He put it on, and as the flaming flannels encased his limbs, he felt his heart glowing within him with gratitude to dear Joe Robins.