"With many thanks for your most excellent and successful performance, which gave just éclat to the gathering to-night,
"Believe me, faithfully yours,
"Henry C. Burdett."
The most difficult audience of all to address is a small audience. I feel far more at home before an audience of three or four thousand than I do before three or four hundred. But the most critical audience, I think, is a boys' school. Not that they criticise you so much at the moment, particularly if you appear as an antidote to Dryasdust. But experience has shown me that something one may have said has opened a fresh idea in the youthful mind, and the criticism, though frequently belated, is more genuine than that of the matured members of the public who simply wish to be amused for the passing hour.
SPEAKER BRAND,
AFTERWARDS VISCOUNT HAMPDEN.
OMETIMES I have discovered in my audience public men I am "taking off" in my entertainment. This more frequently happened in the "Humours of Parliament," where the M.P. of the place in which I appeared came if I was not too unkind to him. But it more often happened he sent a member of the family in advance, to find out whether the great man was lampooned or not.
A friend of mine on a visit to a country house informed me that his hostess, seeing I was "billed" for two nights in the neighbourhood, previous to arranging a house party to hear me, took the precaution to send the Curate the first night to report. He came back and condemned me and my show unmercifully; my manner, matter, and voice were all bad, and I was certainly not worth hearing. So the party did not go. It so happened that in the particular entertainment I was giving—"America in a Hurry"—I imitate a lisping country parson struggling through a wretched entertainment with a lantern!
The most trying, at the same time most interesting, experience I had was in my first tour with my "Humours of Parliament," when I appeared at Lewes. The ex-Speaker of the House of Commons, Viscount Hampden, was in my audience, and it was interesting to watch him as I gave my imitations of him, calling an unruly Member to order.