of some half-dozen words "in character." But when I first became initiated into the mysteries of amateur performances, and saw how entirely destitute some men were of any notion of natural acting, and how they made a point of repeating two lines of familiar dialogue with the tone and manner, but without the correctness, of a schoolboy going through a task--then it ceased to be any matter of wonder that those to whom acting was no joke, but an unhappily earnest mode of getting bread, should so often make their performance appear the uneasy effort which it is. There was one man in particular, a good-humoured, gentlemanly fellow, a favourite with us all,--not remarkable for talent, but a pleasant companion enough, with plenty of common-sense. Well, "he would be an actor"--it was his own fancy to have a part, and, as he was "one of us," we could not well refuse him. We give him an easy one, for he was not vain of his own powers, or ambitious of theatrical distinction; so he was to be "second fellow"--one of Tony's pot-companions. He had but two lines to speak; but from the very first time I heard him read them, I set him down as a hopeless case. He read them as if he had just learned to spell the words; when he repeated them without the book, it was like a clergyman giving out a text. And so it was with a good many of the rank and file of the company; we had more labour to drill them into something like a natural intonation than to learn our own longest speeches twice over. So we made their attendance at rehearsals a _sine qua non_. We dismissed a promising "Mat Muggins" because he went to the "Union" two nights successively, when he ought to have been at "The Three Pigeons." We superseded a very respectable "landlord" (though he had actually been measured for a corporation and a pair of calves) for inattention to business. The only one of the supernumeraries whom it was at all necessary to conciliate, was the gentleman who was to sing the comic song instead of Tony (Savile, the representative of the said Tony, not having music in his soul beyond a view-holloa). He was allowed to go and come at our readings _ad libitum_, upon condition of being very careful not to take cold.