The painful home-coming is that of the amateur criminal--the man or woman who has taken a fatal step and endured the _shame_ of imprisonment. Then the return of the father or the son to the home to which he has been a stranger so long is often a poignant little domestic drama. I have seen a decent man come out of prison--a man who was innocent, and whom I knew to be innocent--and even in his case the first meeting with friends and acquaintances was a painful trial. In the respectable family the joy of a relative's return is damped by the knowledge that the prison taint clings, that nothing ever wholly removes it. The man from gaol--the woman from gaol--may be loyally determined never again to deviate by a hair's-breadth from the straight path, but the world does not take the future into consideration when it reckons up the moral worth of a man or woman. The previous conviction is not mentioned in a Court of Justice till the accused has been found guilty. In the world the previous conviction stands against a man throughout his life, though he may never sin again. That is the burthen that the discharged prisoner of the better class brings with him into the home where his dear ones are waiting to welcome him. He has come back with his shame upon him, and in the shadow of that shame those who bear his name will have to live. It is to escape the shame that a new name, a new environment, sometimes a new sky, is sought. Far away from the land of their birth there are to-day hundreds of families expatriated by the sin of one member of it. In the Continental cities there are to be met with Englishmen and Englishwomen with whose doings at one time all England rang. They have come abroad, sometimes to hide themselves, but frequently that their children may be educated in Continental schools where the name they bear will carry no scandal with it to the ears of their classmates. Hidden away under assumed names there are tragedies which at one time have been the talk of the town. The stage affords greater facilities for a sudden change of identity than any other profession, and for that reason many young men and women who have a desire to be known by a new name do their best to get on to it as a means of livelihood. In commercial life, before a young man or a young woman can secure an appointment of any kind a reference must be given, and the giving necessitates the revelation of the real name, and probably the family story the applicant is most anxious to conceal. But for the chorus of a musical comedy, for a small part in a play on tour, the applicant can give any name he or she may choose. There are no such things as references. All that the manager wants is appearance, voice, and the possession of a certain amount of ability. There happened once in the rehearsals of a drama of mine an incident far more dramatic than any I had put in the piece itself.