eye-glass. His appearance I should never have forgotten anyhow, but he
is also connected in my mind with my first experience of terror.

It came to me in the greenroom, the window-seat of which was a favorite
haunt of mine. Curled up in the deep recess I had been asleep one
evening, when I was awakened by a strange noise, and, peeping out, saw
Mr. Harley stretched on the sofa in a fit. One side of his face was
working convulsively, and he was gibbering and mowing the air with his
hand. When he saw me, he called out: "Little Nelly! oh, little Nelly!" I
stood transfixed with horror. He was still dressed as Launcelot Gobbo,
and this made it all the more terrible. A doctor was sent for, and Mr.
Harley was looked after, but he never recovered from his seizure and
died a few days afterwards.

Although so much of my early life is vague and indistinct, I can always
see and hear Mr. Harley as I saw and heard him that night, and I can
always recollect the view from the greenroom window. It looked out on a
great square courtyard, in which the spare scenery, that was not in
immediate use, was stacked. For some reason or other this courtyard was
a favorite playground for a large company of rats. I don't know what the
attraction was for them, except that they may have liked nibbling the
paint off the canvas. Out they used to troop in swarms, and I, from my
perch on the window-seat, would watch and wonder. Once a terrible storm
came on, and years after, at the Lyceum, the Brocken Scene in "Faust"
brought back the scene to my mind--the thunder and lightning and the
creatures crawling on every side, the _grayness_ of the whole thing.

All "calls" were made from the greenroom in those days, and its
atmosphere was, I think, better than that of the dressing-room in which
nowadays actors and actresses spend their time during the waits. The