"'You, sir, are a poet,' I said. 'Perhaps it may be my privilege some day to produce a play of yours. Would you like it to have a long run or a short one?' (Roars of laughter.) "Answer: 'Well--er--well, of course, Mr. Irving, you--well--well, a short run, of course for _art_, but--' "'Now, sir, you're on oath,' said I. 'Suppose that the fees were rolling in £10 and more a night--would you rather the play were a failure or a success?' "'Well, well, as _you_ put it--I must say--er--I would rather my play had a _long_ run!' "A---- floored! "He has all his life been writing articles running down good work and crying up the impossible, and I was glad to show him up a bit! "The Vice-Chancellor made a most lovely speech after the address--an eloquent and splendid tribute to the stage. "Bourchier presented the address of the 'Undergrads.' I never saw a young man in a greater funk--because, I suppose, he had imitated me so often! "From the address: "'We have watched with keen and enthusiastic interest the fine intellectual quality of all these representations from Hamlet to Mephistopheles with which you have enriched the contemporary stage. To your influence we owe deeper knowledge and more reverent study of the master mind of Shakespeare.' "All very nice indeed!" I never cared much for Henry's Mephistopheles--a twopence colored part, anyway. Of course he had his moments--he had them in every part--but they were few. One of them was in the Prologue, when he wrote in the student's book, "Ye shall be as gods knowing good and evil." He never looked at the book, and the nature of the _spirit_ appeared suddenly in a most uncanny fashion. Another was in the Spinning-wheel Scene when Faust defies Mephistopheles, and he silences him with, "_I am a spirit_." Henry looked to grow a gigantic height--to hover over the ground instead of walking on it. It was terrifying. I made valiant efforts to learn to spin before I played Margaret. My instructor was Mr. Albert Fleming, who, at the suggestion of Ruskin, had recently revived hand-spinning and hand-weaving in the North of England. I had always hated that obviously "property" spinning-wheel in the opera, and Margaret's unmarketable thread. My thread always broke, and at last I had to "fake" my spinning to a certain extent; but at least I worked my wheel right, and gave an impression that I could spin my pound of thread a day with the best. Two operatic stars did me the honor to copy my Margaret dress--Madame Albani and Madame Melba. It was rather odd, by the way, that many mothers who took their daughters to see the opera of "Faust" would not bring them to see the Lyceum play. One of these mothers was Princess Mary of Teck, a constant patron of most of our plays.