“I remember,” Bram Stoker once told me, “on the first night of his playing Othello with Edwin Booth, he found his throat parched and his powers of voice and articulation consequently crippled. He was always a bad first nighter, for with the responsibility of the play as well as his own work as an actor, such an occasion was apt to strain even his nerves. In one of the great scenes I heard him tell one of the stage workers to bring him some water—quick. The man set off for the dressing-room, but Irving called him back and told him to get it from one of the fire plugs which were on the stage.”