They did not know that years ago, when the Imperial Theatre was called 'Higg's Hall of Amusement,' Bob Spate, then a young man, had written several of the comedies which had since so entranced the world, and had hawked them about here and there to London and provincial managers, always receiving them back upon his hands with a half civil, half contemptuous refusal. How was he, they argued, who was only a fifth-rate actor at a pound a week, to be able to write a comedy, or even, could he do so, what benefit could they reap by the production of the work of an unknown man? So Bob Spate struggled and struggled in poverty, in sickness, and ofttimes in hunger; struggled on, and saw his wife die, and his children shrunken and wan and ailing, with the bitter knowledge that what he had written was better than nine-tenths of what he saw so highly paid for, but with the conviction that Fate was against him. When bright little Lotty Bennett made her first attempt at establishing herself in life, and taking the dirty old Higg's Hall, changed it into the bright Imperial, she thought that as she herself was new in management, and she had a new company of actors, she might try a new author; and remembering Bob Spate, who had been an old friend of hers, and in whose energy and talent he had always faith, produced one of his comedies on her opening night. The success was immense, and from that time Bob Spate's fortune was made; wealth is his now, and honour, and such position as he chooses to take. What are they to him? Can they bring back to him the wife of his youth, whom he saw die by his side, not from actual starvation, indeed, but from lack of such necessaries as her delicate condition required? Can they efface from his mind the privations suffered by his children and himself? Can they bring back to him the youthful energy, the sanguine hope, the bright happy view of life so long since fled? I trow not. It is no wonder to me that Bob Spate is grave and reticent.