Mr. May used to sketch sections of other people's designs of costumes for use in the ward-robe room, and eventually got to designing comic dresses and suggestions for masks and make-ups in the property-room. This brought him orders for actor's portraits, for which he received at first a shilling, and later five shillings. Remuneration bred independence, and he took to living with three or four other boys, their lodgings costing five shillings a week. After a year or two of this life, the late Fred Stimpson, who had a travelling burlesque company, engaged May to play small parts and do six sketches every week to serve as window-bills in the various small towns they visited. His remuneration was twelve shillings a week, and on this he lived for two or more years. After that, about 1873, he got an engagement to draw for a small local comic journal, called _The Yorkshire Gossip_, which died after four weeks. In 1882 Mr. May was engaged to design the dresses for the Leeds pantomime, and flushed with success, or sickened with the squalid hand-to-hand life he had led since he was a boy--he was then a full-grown man of seventeen--he made up his mind to burn his boats and come to London, and _there_ he became a tragedian. His finances consisted of one sovereign. Fifteen shillings and five-pence halfpenny bought him a third-class ticket, and vanity and temptation cost him four shillings and sixpence at the Gaiety Bar. "But what," he adds, "did it all matter? I was in London--the lap of luxury. I remembered my aunt, Mrs. Hanner, who had married again, an actor called Fred Morton, and I looked them up at St. John Street Road, Islington." Mr. May does not think they were very glad to see him; but they took him in, gave him food and a night's lodging, and next day his new uncle, after showing him the sights of London, put him in the Leeds train. He got out, however, at the next station and walked back. Chance led him towards Clapham way. It was winter and he tried to get work, till he was too tired to walk and too cold and hungry to speak. He begged the broken dry biscuits at the public-houses; he quenched his thirst at the street fountains. The best bit of luck he had was when he induced a child on the Suspension Bridge to part with his bread and bacon in exchange for a walking-stick. He led a terrible life of privation, and by night slept in the Park, on the Embankment, or in a cart in the Market near the stage-door of the Princess's Theatre. He was too proud to go to his relations or to Mr. Wilson Barrett. The first bit of real luck he had was in meeting with the keeper of a photograph shop near Charing Cross. He took May's drawing of Irving, Toole and Bancroft, and published it. It was a partnership arrangement, and the publisher lost about £5 in the venture. But though he was nearly as hard up as Mr. May was, when he had any money, he used often to take him to a shop near the old Pavilion and give him a dinner of beef _à la mode_. "It was good!" Mr.