[Original]

HAD a day in London before starting off on my next venture, and so looked in at my old theater. I knew none of the company, but the workmen and supers were mostly the same that I had left there. Dear old Jim was in his usual state and greeted me with a pleasant:

“Hulloa! you seem jolly fond of the place, you do. What the deuce brings here?”

I explained that it was a hankering to see him once again.

“Mad Mat” was there, too. The pantomime was still running, and Mat played a demon with a pasteboard head. He was suffering great injustice nightly, so it appeared from what he told me. He was recalled regularly at the end of the scene in which he and his brother demons were knocked about by the low comedian, but the management would not allow him to go on again and bow.

“They are jealous,” whispered Mat to me, as we strolled into The Rodney (it would be unprofessional for an actor to meet a human creature whose swallowing organization was intact, and not propose a drink)—“jealous, that’s what it is. I’m getting too popular, and they think I shall cut them out.”

The poor fellow was madder than ever, and I was just thinking so at the very moment that he turned to me and said:

“Do you think I’m mad? candidly now.”

It’s a little awkward when a maniac asks you point-blank if you think he’s mad. Before I could collect myself sufficiently to reply, he continued:

“People often say I’m mad—I’ve heard them. Even if I am, it isn’t the thing to throw in a gentleman’s teeth, but I’m not—I’m not. You don’t think I am, do you?”