text:  Till I became a manager myself I always used to lose patience at the wretched manner in which some of the underlings on the stage went through the little they had to say and do: there seemed no reason why the "sticks" should be so provokingly sticky; and it surprised me that a man who could accost one fluently enough at the stage door should make such a bungle as some of them did in a message of some half dozen words "in character