cover a portal of the scene, and that the figure of the spectre should be seen dimly through it.  But even then the contour of Thompson was found very inappropriate to a phantom.  It was necessary to select for the part an actor of a slighter and taller form.  At length a representative of the ghost was found in the person of Follet, the clown, “celebrated for his eating of carrots in the pantomimes.”  Follet readily accepted the part:  his height was heroic, he was a skilled posture-maker, he was well versed in the duties of a mime.  Still there was a further difficulty.  The ghost had to speak—­only two words, it is true—­he had to utter the words “Perished here!” and, as the clown very frankly admitted:  “‘Perished here’ will be exactly the fate of the author if I’m left to say it.”  The gallery would recognise the clown’s voice, and all seriousness would be over for the evening.  It was like the ass in the lion’s skin—­he would bray, and all would be betrayed.  At last it was determined that the part should be divided; Follet should perform the actions of the ghost, while Thompson, in the wings, out of the sight of the audience, should pronounce the important words.  The success of the experiment was signal.  Follet, in a closely-fitting suit of dark-gray stuff, made in the shape of armour, faintly visible through the sheet of gauze, flitted across the stage like a shadow, amidst the breathless silence of the house, to be followed presently, on the falling of the curtain, by peal after peal of excited applause.

A humorous story of a stage ghost is told in Raymond’s “Life of Elliston,” aided by an illustration from the etching-needle of George Cruikshank, executed in quite his happiest manner.  Dowton the actor, performing a ghost part—­to judge from the illustration, it must have been the ghost in “Hamlet,” but the teller of the story does not say formally that such was the fact—­had, of course, to be lowered in the old-fashioned way through a trap-door in the stage, his face being turned towards the audience.  Elliston and De Camp, concealed beneath the stage, had provided themselves with small ratan canes, and as their brother-actor slowly and solemnly descended, they applied their sticks sharply and rapidly to the calves of his legs, unprotected by the plate armour that graced his shins.  Poor Dowton with difficulty preserved his gravity of countenance, or refrained from the utterance of a yell of agony while in the presence of the audience.  His lower limbs, beneath the surface of the stage, frisked and curvetted about “like a horse in Ducrow’s arena.”  His passage below was maliciously made as deliberate as possible.  At length, wholly let down, and completely out of the sight of the audience, he looked round the obscure regions beneath the stage to discover the base perpetrators of the outrage.  He was speechless with rage and burning for revenge.  Elliston and his companion had of course vanished.  Unfortunately, at that moment, Charles Holland, another