On the rare occasions when he played the lead, he made no great hit.

The company did not, after the generous way of theatre folks, surround him, when the performance was over, with a chorus of congratulation.

The manager would say, "Quite all' right, my boy, as far as it goes, but still wooden.

You must get more life into it." And Paul, who knew himself to be a better man in every way than the actor whose part he was playing, just as in his childhood days he knew himself to be a better man than Billy Goodge, could not understand the general lack of appreciation.

Then he remembered the early struggles of the great actors: Edmund Kean, who on the eve of his first appearance at Drury Lane cried, "If I succeed I shall go mad!"; of Henry Irving (then at his zenith) and the five hundred parts he had played before he came to London; he recalled also the failure of Disraeli's first speech in the House of Commons and his triumphant prophecy.