But, like poor Joe, of Dickens, we must keep moving on, and so leave Johnson and Baker for another actor who waits to strut across the stage of these "Palmy Days." Thomas Elrington is the new-comer; the same Elrington who sought to outshine the tragic Barton Booth, without possessing either the genius or the scholarship of that noble son of Melpomene.

As a boy, Thomas was apprenticed by an impecunious father to an upholsterer in Covent Garden, but he cared more for the theatre than for his trade, and was, no doubt, regarded by his employer as a future candidate for the gallows.
* * * * * "I remember when he was an apprentice," relates Chetwood, "we play'd in several private plays; when we were preparing to act 'Sophonisba, or Hannibal's Overthrow,' after I had wrote out my part of Massiva I carried him the book of the play to study the part of King Masinissa.
I found him finishing a velvet cushion, and gave him the book: but alas! before he could secrete it, his master (a hot, voluble Frenchman), came in upon us, and the book was thrust under the velvet of the cushion.

His master, as usual, rated him for not working, with a 'Morbleu! why a you not vark, Tom ?' and stood over him so long that I saw, with some mortification, the book irrecoverably stitch'd up in the cushion never to be retriev'd till the cushion is worn to pieces.
Poor Tom cast many a desponding look upon me when he was finishing the fate of the play, while every stitch went to both our hearts.
"His master observing our looks, turn'd to me, and with words that broke their necks over each other for haste, abused both of us.

The most intelligible of his great number of words were Jack Pudenges, and the like expressions of contempt.

But our play was gone for ever.
"Another time," continues the biographer, "we were so bold to attempt Shakespeare's 'Hamlet,' where our 'prentice Tom had the part of the Ghost, father to young Hamlet.