necessity of having a grandfather, and knows no more about him than is related above. Mr. May's father was apprenticed as an engineer to George Stephenson, and worked in the drawing office of the great engineer at Newcastle, where he met his wife. She was a Miss Macarthy, and her father was Eugène Macarthy, who belonged to an old theatrical family connected with the management of the New Theatre, Wolverhampton. An old bill on satin struck to commemorate a "Bespeak" performance, "under the distinguished patronage of Lord Wrottesley," gives Eugène Macarthy as playing Lord Tinsel in _The Hunchback_, and Jenkins, in _Gretna Green_; or, _The Biter Bit_, on Friday, May 9th, 1845. In this bill Mr. James Bennett was the Master Walter; H. Lacy the Modus; Mrs. W. Rignold the Julia, and Miss Fanny Wallack, Helen. Mr. May's father was unlucky in life. He started a brass-foundry, but, as your host puts it, his partner cleared off with all the brass; and a consulting-engineer business was not much more satisfactory. Mr. Phil May was born in 1864, shortly after the collapse of the brass-foundry, at Wortley, an outlying manufacturing district of Leeds. His father died when he was nine years old, and his schooldays, as he tells you, commenced early in the School Board era. At that time the new officials were very alert, so he had one year's scholastic education. He was a little delicate fellow, and was made a butt of by the other boys; and he was the victim of many practical jokes. "My artistic career," Mr. May tells you, "may be said to have begun when I was about twelve, at which time the Grand Theatre, Leeds, opened. The local scene-painter was a man called Fox, a brother of Charles Fox, and I became acquainted with his son, who helped to mix the distemper. Young Fox and other boys called Ford, Sammy Stead, and I used to rehearse pantomimes. Our stage was a back street, and our scenery was designed with a stick in the gutter; but we omitted nothing. The star-traps were all marked out, and we made our descents by flinging ourselves on our faces in the muddy road. I was always a sprite, and carried 'The Book of Fate,' which had a prominent place in all our pantomimes."