My father being what is called a serious tallow-chandler, having supplied the Baptist Meeting-house of Nantwich with _dips_ for many years, intended to make me a field-preaching minister. Alas! _my_ books were plays, _my_ sermons soliloquies. You would not have wondered, had you seen me then, with my large dark eyes, my permanent nose, and a mouth to which my picture does but scanty justice. In large theatres these may be but secondary considerations; but a figure symmetrical as mine must have been seen through all space. Accordingly, I eloped with the young lady who used to rehearse my heroines with me, and came to London, where, after we had studied together till I was in debt, and she, as “ladies wish to be who love their lords,” I began applying to the managers for leave to make my _debût_. I will not describe to you the neglect and rudeness I experienced! It did not abate my enthusiasm: but so true it is, “while the grass grows”--the proverb is somewhat musty,--that I had soon nothing but musty bread on which to feed my hopes, and hopeful wife. One burning spring day I roved as far as the fields near Greenwich, and, book in hand, went through Romeo, though but to a shy audience, for the sheep all took to their trotters, and the crows to their wings, and not without _caws_. (That joke _was_ mine, let who will have claimed it.) [Illustration: PRIVATE THEATRICALS.] [Illustration: NEGLECTING TO JOIN IN A CATCH.] Suddenly somebody hissed; it could not be the sheep, and no geese were near. At that instant a very elegant man, stepping from behind a tree, thus accosted me:--