Of course the comic man could not think of charging for mere board and
lodging the man who knocked him down when they were boys together!
Besides, was not the heroine (now the hero's wife) the sweetest and
the blithest girl in all the village of Deepdale? (They must have
been a gloomy band, the others!) How can any one with a human heart
beneath his bosom suggest that people like that should pay for their
rest and washing? The comic man is shocked at his wife for even
thinking of such a thing, and the end of it is that Mr. and Mrs. Hero
live there for the rest of the play rent free; coals, soap, candles,
and hair-oil for the child being provided for them on the same terms.

The hero raises vague and feeble objections to this arrangement now
and again. He says he will not hear of such a thing, that he will
stay no longer to be a burden upon these honest folk, but will go
forth unto the roadside and there starve. The comic man has awful
work with him, but wins at last and persuades the noble fellow to stop
on and give the place another trial.

When, a morning or so after witnessing one of these beautiful scenes,
our own landlady knocks at our door and creates a disturbance over a
paltry matter of three or four weeks' rent, and says she'll have her
money or out we go that very day, and drifts slowly away down toward
the kitchen, abusing us in a rising voice as she descends, then we
think of these things and grow sad.

It is the example of the people round him that makes the comic man so
generous. Everybody is generous on the stage. They are giving away
their purses all day long; that is the regulation "tip" on the
stage--one's purse. The moment you hear a tale of woe, you grab it