They were alike in this: they both loved books and were possessed of the
eager, earnest, receptive mind. To possess the hospitable mind! For what
greater blessing can one pray?

And then they were alike in other respects--they were desperately poor;
neither had an income; neither had a profession; both were ambitious.
Johnson had written a tragedy--"Irene"--and he had read it to Garrick
several times, and Garrick said it was good and should make a hit. But
Garrick didn't know much about tragedies--law was his bent--he had read
law for two years, off and on. They would go to London and seize fortune
by the scalp-lock. In London good lawyers were needed, and London was the
only place for a playwright.

They scraped together their pennies, borrowed a few more, got a single
letter of introduction between them to some person of unknown influence,
and started away, with the lacrimose blessings of the elderly bride, and
of Davy's mother.

They must have been a queer sight when the stage let them down at the
Strand--dusty, dirty, tired and scared by the babel of sounds and sights!
And no doubt Johnson's enormous size saved them from sundry insults and
divers taunts that otherwise might have come their way.

Those first few weeks in London were given to staring into shop-windows
and wandering, open-mouthed, up and down. No one wanted the tragedy--the
managers all sniffed at it. Little then did Davy dream, as they made their
way from the office of one theater-manager to that of another, that he
himself would some day own a theater and give the discarded play its first
setting. And little did he think that he would yet be the foremost actor
of his time, and his awkward mate the literary dictator of London. Oh!