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264 timeless immortality. The request was granted: the applicant retired.

I have known actors so devoted to their art that they treat every incident, however trivial, as a matter of theatrical importance, and impose on every acquaintance the rôle of a spectator. They grasp your hand with that fervour which warms the heart of the gallery, and take leave of a lady with glances such as melt the stalls. This exaggerated consciousness of his calling is utterly absent from Mr. Danjuro, who, off the boards, becomes less of an actor and more of an archbishop in proportion as he realises every year the growing prestige and veneration attached by the bulk of his compatriots to the chief of the Japanese stage. To them he is a great deal more than the successful acquirer of fame and money: he is the inheritor and transmitter of a great tradition, a living link with that pictorial old Japan which, beaten back by modern innovation outside the theatre, holds its own gallantly in the unstormed fortress of national drama. His habitation is in complete accord with the honourable position held by its proprietor. Good taste and simplicity conceal all traces of the wealth which is his. Opposite the reception-room is a small lake, decorated with trees and huge ornamental stones such as the Japanese aesthete loves, since they recall, as far as may be, the freaks which Nature loves to play with forest and mountain. The rooms are of white wood, beautifully planed, and the only objects which suggest the theatre are fuda, or long laths, hung with wreaths and bands of silk, on which are inscribed tributes of admiration from tea-houses, geisha-houses, and guilds of various kinds. When the master entered, wearing a quiet-coloured kimono of grey cotton, he greeted his visitors