“It is quite true, Irving,” I answered. “And I will tell you why. I do not think any one has a higher appreciation of your genius as an actor than I have, and if I could have found the occasion to praise this particular performance I would gladly have seized it, but I thought it, rightly or wrongly, a bad performance, and, out of a spirit of loyalty to my larger admiration of your talent, I refrained from saying so. But I see now that I was wrong. In view of what you have said to-night I feel it would have been better to have said what I thought. You may however be assured, after what has occurred, that I shall not commit that blunder again.” My defence was absolutely sincere, and I think Irving realised it. At any rate, I know that this little incident, which occurred upon the threshold of our friendship, did not hinder the formation of a close fellowship which endured and strengthened during the greater part of his career. Bret Harte was an occasional visitor to the Savile, but I saw him more often and more intimately at the delightful meetings of the Kinsmen Club, a society that was designedly founded to bring together men of kindred interest in Art and Letters from both sides of the Atlantic. It has often been something of a puzzle to me that Bret Harte should not have ranked higher as an author among his own compatriots. In his own realm as a story-teller it seems to me hardly possible to rank him too high. That he owed much to Dickens he himself, I believe, would have been the first to acknowledge; but that his own individuality, both in humour and pathos, outstripped any reproach of imitation cannot, I think, be questioned by those to whom his work makes any strong appeal. Socially he never made any endeavour to press for consideration of his literary claims. He was willing to speak of his work on the invitation of others, and always with modesty. In converse you would hardly have guessed he was a writer, nor did he often lead conversation on to the subject of literature, but I found in him, what I have always found in his writings, a certain reticent delicacy of perception, touched and fired now and again with a quick chivalry of feeling in all that concerned the relation of the sexes. To his own countrymen I suppose he belonged to a past era in literary art, an era which preceded that elaborate analysis of the feminine temperament as distinguished from feminine character which to the mind of so many modern novelists appears to rank as the final victory of fiction. CHAPTER XVI MEN OF THE THEATRE My association with the theatre began somewhat disastrously. It was my father’s kindly thought, while we were still children, to afford us an annual visit to the pantomime, a visit that was accomplished for our large family by means of two hired flies, which transported us from our house at Barnes to the chosen place of amusement.