Henry used to spend hours and hours teaching people. I used to think impatiently: "Acting can't be taught." Gradually I learned to modify this conviction and to recognize that there are two classes of actors: 1. Those who can only do what they are taught. 2. Those who cannot be taught, but can be helped by suggestion to work out things for themselves. Henry said to me once: "What makes a popular actor? Physique! What makes a great actor? Imagination and sensibility." I tried to believe it. Then I thought to myself: "Henry himself is not quite what is understood by 'an actor of physique,' and certainly he is popular. And that he is a great actor I know. He certainly has both imagination and 'sense and sensibility.'" After the lapse of years I begin to wonder if Henry was ever really _popular_. It was natural to most people to dislike his acting--they found it queer, as some find the painting of Whistler--but he forced them, almost against their will and nature, out of dislike into admiration. They had to come up to him, for never would he go down to them. This is not popularity. _Brain_ allied with the instinct of the actor tells, but stupidity allied with the instinct of the actor tells more than brain alone. I have sometimes seen a clever man who was not a born actor play a small part with his brains, and have felt that the cleverness was telling more with the actors on the stage than with the audience. Terriss, like Mrs. Pritchard, if we are to believe what Dr. Johnson said of her, often did not know what on earth he was talking about! One morning we went over and over one scene in "Much Ado"--at least a dozen times I should think--and each time when Terriss came to the speech beginning: "What needs the bridge much broader than the flood," he managed to give a different emphasis. First it would be: "What! _Needs_ the bridge much broader than the flood!" Then: "What needs the bridge _much_ broader than the flood." After he had been floundering about for some time, Henry said: "Terriss, what's the meaning of that?" "Oh, get along, Guv'nor, _you_ know!" Henry laughed. He never could be angry with Terriss, not even when he came to rehearsal full of absurd excuses. One day, however, he was so late that it was past a joke, and Henry spoke to him sharply. "I think you'll be sorry you've spoken to me like this, Guv'nor," said Terriss, casting down his eyes. "Now no hanky-panky tricks, Terriss." "Tricks, Guv'nor! I think you'll regret having said that when you hear that my poor mother passed away early this morning." And Terriss wept. Henry promptly gave him the day off. A few weeks later, when Terriss and I were looking through the curtain at the audience just before the play began, he said to me gaily: "See that dear old woman sitting in the fourth row of stalls--that's my dear old mother." The wretch had quite forgotten that he had killed her!