artist has also, as I felt at the time, two great advantages over the actor. No rehearsals, is the first advantage. I have rehearsed during eight weeks for a play which ran only one week. For the nine weeks therefore I drew but one week's salary, and then had to start rehearsing again for a new play which, for all one could tell for certain, might prove equally unremunerative with the former. Then, still more important-a professional artist in the music-hall reaps the fruit of his own personal success; but, for an actor, it is better to be a failure in a piece that succeeds than a success in a piece that fails; you are sacrificed with the whole, your personal success is of no use at any rate of no direct use, to you. You have a song, a good song, "a reg'lar out an' out-er." You sing it well and it takes with the audience. You go to the music-hall, you sing that song, and it may be the making of you; but, as one of many characters in a theatrical piece that fails to draw, you may sing that same song, but your best exertions are bound to end in smoke; you "merely throw yourself away," as an actor would say. I have played in a burlesque and sung a certain song in it; the burlesque was a failure and the song of course fell dead with the burlesque. I revived the same song not long afterwards at a music-hall and it helped to make me.

I made my first plunge into the musichall world at the Pavilion. I chose "The Serenade" to start off with, and for the very reason that I was most doubtful about its chance of success, but felt sure, that if it took on, I was safe. My fear was that a music-hall audience might not "tumble" to the little bit of sentiment that under-ran the whole song. But, I am glad to say, my fear was not realised. I soon felt-one feels it chiefly down the back-that the audience were listening attentively and had no thought of ridiculing the sentiment. I could scarcely believe that I was really succeeding; that first night at the Pavilion I shall never forget. I came on to sing one song, "The Coster's Serenade"; I sang two more, "The Nasty Way 'E Sez It," and then "Funny Without being Vulgar"; by the time I had finished my third song I knew that all was right; the readiness of the audience to listen to "The Serenade " showed me that human sentiment was acceptable as well as pure comicality.

Now let me say this. The music-hall,

developed since then; they have a sort o' kind o' feeling now that they want something besides the best of pure farce and comicality. They are ready to digest some sentiment, some traits of deeper human life with their fare now as well,

and are generous in acknowledging attempts to serve it up for them. They recognise and want something that is true to human nature, up or down the scale, and, whether it be laughable or pathetic, it must in the main be true and in the main artistic.

For myself I don't pretend to a "voice." My performances are rather, strictly speaking, musical recitations than songs.

I write the words of my songs myself. I have a good ear for music-for instance, I can play the fiddle fairly well and the guitar and banjo a little, and a small part of my music I write myself also, or, rather, I get hold of odd bits and "fake" them. But even the "faking" process I do not rely upon much good music, I am sure, is now most essential in the musichall. Whether it is that musical education is getting" forrarder," or not, I do not know; but I do know that an audience like decent harmony, and are not content with what I may call the mere tum-tumtum-tune." My brother writes a great portion of my music-Mr. John Cook wrote the music for "The Serenade "then I take pains to have it well arranged, and Mr. Asher, the conductor at the Tivoli, kindly undertakes the arrangement of most of my music for the orchestra.

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I suppose, on the whole, "Knocked 'em in the Old Kent Road" has been my most popular song; but "The Coster's Serenade," "The Future Mrs. 'Awkins," "The Coster's Courtship" have all had their ample meed of success. The song I am giving now, "My Old Dutch" will open out, I hope, a wider field in front of it and has proved a great catch in the publishing line as well as for acting purposes. For it does not at all follow that a song which is a success as a stage song has a good sale. People may think (and often they are right) that it requires costume and scene to exhibit it to advantage.

But, in the space of a magazine article, I must not attempt to box the compass of music-hall problems. The music-hall stage is not all glory and honour, nor pavement of gold. Like every other profession it demands hard work. I, for instance, do four halls every night, and, on Saturdays two matinées as well. I begin each night at the Royal in Holborn at about 8.30; about 9.30 I go from there to the Canterbury in Westminster Bridge Road; at 10.30 I am at the Tivoli in the Strand; at 11 o'clock I am due at the Pavilion in Piccadilly Circus. As a rule I sing three songs at

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I

each, though I try to get off with two. used to sing all my songs in one rig-out with the exception of The Old Kent Road," and then had only to don a different coat and waistcoat. But now, for "My Old Dutch," I have to make a change from top to toe, paint and the rest of it, but I can do the whole change in two minutes, and have in fact done it in less. Then back to my original dress-a change I can do in one minute-for my last song, and I am in the right costume also for my first song at the next show, and sometimes I have had to get out of my brougham, on my arrival at the next hall, and walk straight from it on to the stage.

But this is, after all, the mere technique of a performance. It is of no importance beside the knowledge of the art of song and acting, an art which I hope it will be long before I have to resign my connection with, for I am as fond and proud of stage and music-hall, and as hopeful of its future, as I was when I studied the first lines of my first part as a lad. I should be ill if I went away for a month's holiday, perfectly unhappy, perfectly miserable. I shall indeed take a holiday soon, probably on the Continent; but it will be a "Busman's Holiday." The bus-driver spends his "day off" in driving on a pal's bus, on the box-seat by his pal's side; and I know that night after night, all through my holiday, I shall be in and out of this hall and that theatre, never happy except when I am watching some theatrical piece or Variety entertainment

OFF THE STAGE.

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCES DESMOND AND DULCIE.

N a certain soft summer evening two young people of different sexes were

strolling slow ly along the strip of yellow sands which led from the verge of the Atlantic to the

steep of rock dominated by Kilpatrick Castle.

The girl, who was not more than seventeen years of age, carried her bonnet and parasol in her hand; the first a serviceable article, little superior in form and material to that generally worn by the superior peasants of the district, the other a dainty trifle in pale blue silk, better in keeping with the tailor-made dress and dainty French shoes in which its owner dressed. She had a delightfully fair and fresh complexion, a little freckled by a too free exposure to the sun, and her dark blue eyes shone from under the rather disorderly wave of her light gold hair with an expression of harmless audacity and

was

frank gaiety eloquent of youth and health and innocence.

Her companion, who might have been. three or four years her senior, was a longlimbed, supple youngster of the finest western Irish type. His hair, long, black, and curly, escaped in natural ripples from under a battered soft felt hat and framed an olive-hued face of great strength and delicacy, lit by a pair of black eyes sparkling with an honest, boyish impudence. The merest shade of callow down darkened about his lips. He was clad in rough and rather ill-cut tweeds, stained in brown patches with salt water, and the collar of a flannel shirt, innocent of stud or neck-tie, left to view a sun-tanned, muscular throat. His long legs kept swing-pace with the tripping lightness of the girl's walk, and he looked down at her from his superior height with a mingling of admiration and protection very pretty to witness, and of which she was perhaps a shade too obviously unconscious.