One of the plays was an old French farce, known to English audiences as "The Hole in the Wall." The principal comedy
part was a clerk to two old misers, who starved him outrageously.
I was a little, stiffly starched person, and I remember that I sat on some one's silk lap, and slipped and slipped, and was hitched up and immediately slipped again until I wished I might fall off and be done with it. Near me sat a little old maiden lady, who had come in from her village shop to see "the show." She wore two small, sausage curls either side of her wrinkled cheeks, large glasses, a broad lace collar, while three members of her departed family gathered together in one fell group on a mighty pin upon her tired chest. She held a small bag on her knee, and from it she now and then slid a bit of cake which, as she nibbled it, gave off a strong odour of caraway seed.
[Illustration: John E. Owens]
Now the actor was clever in his "make-up," and each time he appeared he looked thinner than he had in the scene before. Instead of laughing, however, the old woman took it seriously, and she had to wipe her glasses
with her carefully folded handkerchief several times before that last scene, when she was quite overcome.
His catch phrase had been, "Oh! oh! how hungry I am!" and every time he said it, she gave a little involuntary groan; but as he staggered on at the last, thin as a bit of thread paper, hollow-cheeked, white-faced, she indignantly exclaimed, "Well now, that's a shame!"
The people laughed aloud; the comedian fixed his eyes upon her face, and with hands pressed against his stomach groaned, "O-h! how hungry I am!" and then she opened that bag and drew forth two long, twisted, fried cakes, rose, stood on her tip-toes, and reaching them up to him tearfully remarked:—
"Here, you poor soul, take these. They are awful dry; but it's all I've got with me."