If he said, “Oh! I’m so sorry,” in reply to your announcement that you had lost your ’bus ticket coming along and had had to pay twice, the whole dread incident appeared to you envisaged through a mist of tears. The grief of Agamemnon weeping over the infidelity of Clytemnestra seemed but a trite affair in comparison. One day, with infinite tact, he invited me to his “humble abode.” He occupied the upper part of a small house in Talbot Road. He lived alone, but was apparently tended by a gaunt, middle-aged woman who glided about the place in felt slippers. The rooms were, as he expressed it, “humble,” but not by any means poverty-stricken. He had several pieces of old furniture and bric-à-brac, innumerable mementoes and photographs. It was then that I realized the peculiar position of the actor. If he had been a painter I could have looked at some of his work and have “placed” him; but what could you do with an old actor who lived so much in the past? The position seemed to me pitiable. Doubtless in his day he had been a fine and distinguished actor, and here was I, who knew nothing about him, and did not like to ask what parts he had played because I felt that I ought to know. Neither was he very informing. Not that he was diffident in speech—he talked well and volubly—but I had to gather what he had done by his various implications. There was a signed photograph of himself in the character of Malvolio, and in many other Shakespearean parts. There were also signed photographs of J. L. Toole and Henry Irving, and innumerable actors, some of whom were famous and others whose names were unfamiliar to me. By slow degrees I patched together some of the romantic tissues of his life. Whatever position he may have held in the theatrical world, he certainly still had the faculty of moving one person profoundly—myself. Everything in that little room seemed to vibrate with romance. One of Irving’s photographs was inscribed “To my dear old friend, Colin Brancker.” On the circular table was an enamel snuff-box given him by Nellie Farren. When he spoke of his mother his voice sounded like some distant organ with the _vox humana_ stop pulled out. I gathered that his mother had been a famous French actress. On the piano was a fan given her by the Empress Eugénie. He never spoke of his father. Nearly everything had some intimate association.