Leonard Merrick

“ For years I had conversed with only two kinds of women—the women who awed me, and the women who were awed. In five minutes I was as spontaneous as she. Her tones were, for the most part, very pleasant, and now that she was animated, the play of her features fascinated me. When we had finished our drinks we sauntered round and round the pavilion.
"‘The performing birds are on,' she said, as we caught the music; 'I hate that show, I hate an audience for standing it. Don't they know it's cruel? ”

“ I've booked a table at the Troc, and you're both to lunch there right through the rehearsals. If you can't get away for lunch, it's to be dinner; but one square meal a day the two of you must have regularly, or there'll be rows. Mind, it isn't to be a meal for more than two!"’ Her face lit with laughter. 'There were some boys in the chorus just as stony as we were; my friend would lunch one day, and I'd lunch the next—we'd each take a boy in turn! ”

“ I have been told of artists who suffered agonies in their youth, always tortured by ambition and dismayed by their obscurity. With me it was quite different. I was more joyous in a tent than I am now on the platforms. ”

“ Make an effect somehow. You answer as if you were a servant.'
"Many of my eccentric remarks that you have heard, Duchess, have been composed with difficulty, and practised with care. The world will not have us as we are. My agent often returns a portrait-poster of me to the printer, with the instructions, 'Put more soul into the eyes'!
"I am coming to my love-story. It was no further back than last year that I first met her. I had given a recital at Blithepoint, and was remaining there for a few days' rest. One evening I went to a variety entertainment in the pavilion on the pier. ”

“ The public ask for anecdotes of their favourite artists, and it is business to give the public what they want. I generally play the music that they want, though it is seldom the music that I like best. ”

“ I looked up for Betty's face—and saw a stranger.
"Oh, the horrible woman, the low, horrible woman! And I had to watch her, I watched her in spite of myself. The audience laughed and shouted while I sat there with the sickness of terror in me, while I watched that horrible woman posturing in Betty's place, and wearing the frock that Betty had worn.
"Afterwards, I found the artists' entrance, as I had proposed to find it—only I asked for Eva, instead of Betty. She came down to me, smiling, in her stage costume.
"‘Who'd have thought of seeing you!' she exclaimed, as we shook hands ”

“ I remember the look in her eyes as the train crept from the platform. I shall always remember the look in her eyes as she smiled on the platform!
"Even a weak man may be strong sometimes—in the wrong place ”

“ And then, having blossomed into gauze and spangles, they burlesqued melodrama. After their turn, two of the trio came into the stalls, and, by chance, I spoke to one of them; a Strong Man had broken a sixpence in halves, and thrown the pieces over the footlights—the girl asked me to let her see the piece that I picked up.
"I do not suppose I exchanged twenty words with her, and certainly I gave no thought to the incident ”