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F Mr. Henry Pettit, at the age of three, we have nothing to recount; but at fourteen he ran away from school to Sadler's Wells Theatre, obtained an engagement, went on the stage as an Irish boy armed with a shillelagh, broke the head of a utility actor, and got a drubbing which left him senseless. After this taste of stage-life he obtained an engagement as an usher at the North London Collegiate School, a post which he was holding at the age of our second portrait. But all this while he was writing poems, sketches, and burlesque lectures, and finally, in collaboration with Paul Meritt, he wrote his first play, British Born, which was a grand success. Since then he has produced innumerable dramas, and, as a master of construction and as a realistic writer, he has probably no equal at the present day.