A veteran prompter, who has evidently seen a great deal of the world beyond the foot-lights, in giving his reminiscences, said--"Some actors boast that they never stick. No matter if they have totally forgotten their lines, they 'say something,' as they phrase it, and I have never seen the difference noted by the audience yet. Once, while I was making the rounds of the Pacific coast, twenty years or so ago, I went to see a performance of 'Macbeth,' by the company of a friend of mine in San Francisco. It was a tough company, a band of regulation old-time barn stormers, and the fellow who played _Macbeth_ was so far gone in the dreamy vacancy of whiskey that he 'gagged' his part more than once in the first scene. Finally, in the middle of his second, he was also dead lost. He hesitated, but only for a moment. Then he threw his arms around _Lady Macbeth's_ waist, and drawing her to him, coolly said: 'Let us retire, dearest chuck, and con this matter over in a more sequestered spot, far from the busy haunts of men. Here the walls and doors are spies, and our every word is echoed far and near. Come, then, let's away! False heart must hide, you know, what false heart dare not show.' They made their exit in a roar of applause, and I thought, 'There's a man who has no use for a prompter, sure enough.' [Illustration: IMPROVING SPARE MOMENTS.] "All actors are not like him, however. Raw actors are the prompter's horror. The debutante is another. She will forget every line the moment she strikes the stage, and be so nervous, moreover, that she will not be able to repeat those the prompter reads to her. I remember one young lady who thought she had a mission to play _Juliet_. She made her appearance, supported by a country company, and lost every line, as usual. We prompted her through her first scene, somehow. When the balcony scene was on, her mother stood on the ladder behind her, reading her speeches word for word, which she repeated after her. But the old lady was a heavy weight, and the step-ladder was no longer in the flower of youth; so, in the middle of the farewell, it gave way. The old lady was tumbled forward against the ricketty staging of the balcony, and it fell against the set piece that masked it in from the audience. So _Juliet_, mother, balcony, and all toppled down on _Romeo_, and by the time he was taken from the wreck he was as mournful a lover as the play makes him out to be." [Illustration: AN ACTRESS' USEFUL HUSBAND.]