Forty years of 'Spy'

by Sir Leslie Ward

3 a.m. "This game bores me." CORNEY GRAIN.

"TOM" BIRD. A bird with a "full" hand is worth two with a flush.

CORNEY GRAIN AT DATCHET.

PELLEGRINI. "Can't play billiard to-night, my boy, I 'av lumbago. What you recommend to make the ''air grow?'"

Much of my time was occupied before the curtain was raised in "making up" some of the "Forty Thieves" as prominent people of the day. For instance, Frank Parker's features adapted themselves to Gladstone's in a strikingly useful manner, and in consequence the "make up" was at once recognizable. "Willie" Higgins was Benson the convict, and so on.

At the end of the rehearsals many of us, being members of the Beefsteak Club, adjourned there, and it was not until the early morning that our party sought our respective beds. When I come to think of it, the majority of us were fairly young in those days, so we were all well able to stand the strain.