Morell Mackenzie. In the middle of one of his sentences I said: "Wait a
minute while I get a glass of water." I was out of the room and back so
soon that he said, "Well, go and get it then!" and was paralyzed when he
saw that the glass was in my hand and that I was sitting down again!

_Consider!_ That was one of Charles Reade's favorite expressions, and
just hearing him say the word used to make me consider, and think, and
come to conclusions--perhaps not always the conclusions that he wished,
but suggested by him.

In this matter of "ardent" exit, he wrote:

"The swift rush of the words, the personal rush, should carry you
off the stage. It is in reality as easy as shelling peas, if you
will only go by the right method instead of by the wrong. You have
overcome far greater difficulties than this, yet night after night
you go on suffering ignoble defeat at this point. Come, courage!
You took a leaf out of Reade's dictionary at Manchester, and
trampled on two difficulties--impossibilities, you called them.
That was on Saturday, Monday you knocked the poor impossibilities
down. Tuesday you kicked them where they lay. Wednesday you walked
placidly over their prostrate bodies!"

The difficulty that he was now urging me to knock down was one of
_pace_, and I am afraid that in all my stage life subsequently I never
quite succeeded in kicking it or walking over its prostrate body!

Looking backward, I remember many times when I failed in rapidity of
utterance, and was "pumped" at moments when swiftness was essential.
Pace is the soul of comedy, and to elaborate lines at the expense of