I hear many tales of the insolence of stars—of their overbearing manners, and their injustice to "little people," as the term goes; but personally I have seen almost nothing of it. In the old days stars were generally patient and courteous in their manners to the supporting companies.

Among the stars whose coming was always hailed with joy was Edwin Adams, he of the golden voice, he who should have prayed with fervor, both day and night: "Oh, God! protect me from my friends!" He was so popular with men, they sought him out, they followed him, and they generally expressed their liking through the medium of food and drink. Like every other sturdy man that's worth his salt, he could stand off an enemy, but he was as weak as water in the hands of a friend, and thus it came about that he often stood in slippery places, and though he fell again and again, yet was he forgiven as often as he sinned, and heartily welcomed back the next season, so great was his power to charm.

He was not handsome, he was not heroic in form, but there was such dash and go, such sincerity and naturalness in all his work, that whether he was love-making or fighting, singing or dying, he convinced you he was the character's self, whether that character was the demented victim of the Bastille, young Rover in "Wild Oats," or that most gallant gentleman Mercutio, in which no greater ever strode than that of Edwin Adams. His buoyancy of spirit, his unconquerable gayety made it seem but natural his passion for jesting should go with him to the very grave. Many a fine Mercutio gives:

with a resentful bitterness that implies blame to Romeo for his "taking off," which would be a most cruel legacy of grief and remorse to leave to his young friend—but Adams was that brave Mercutio:

and whose last quips, coming faintly across paling lips, expressed still good-natured fun, and so:

but no blame at all.

His grace of movement and his superb voice were his greatest gifts. Most stars had one rather short play which they reserved for Saturday nights, that they might be able to catch their night train en route for the next engagement; so it happened that Mr. Adams, having bravely held temptation from him during the first five nights, generally yielded to the endearments of his friends by the sixth, and was most anyone but himself when he came to dress for the performance of a play most suggestively named: "The Drunkard." It was a painful and a humiliating sight to see him wavering uncertainly in the entrance. All brightness, intelligence, and high endeavor extinguished by liquor's murky fog. His apologies were humble and evidently sincere, but the sad memory was one not to be forgotten.

I had just married, and we were in San Francisco. I was rehearsing for my engagement there. The papers said Mr. Adams had arrived from Australia and had been carried on a stretcher to a hotel, where, with his devoted wife by his side, he lay dying. A big lump rose in my throat, tears filled my eyes. I asked my husband, who had greatly admired the actor, and who was glad to pay him any courtesy or service possible, to call, leave cards, and if he saw Mrs. Adams, which was improbable, to try to coax her out for a drive, if but for half an hour, and to deliver a message of remembrance and sympathy from me to her husband. To his surprise, he was admitted by the dying man's desire to his room, where the worn, weary, self-contained, ever gently smiling wife sat and, like an automaton, fanned hour by hour, softly, steadily fanned breath between those parched lips, that whispered a gracious message of congratulation and thanks.

Mrs. Adams never left him, scarce took her eyes from him. Poor wife! who knew she could hold him but a few hours longer.

My husband was deeply moved, and when he tried to describe to me that wasted frame—those helpless hands, whose faintly twitching fingers could no longer pluck at the folded sheet, my mind obstinately refused to accept the picture, and instead, through a blur of tears, I saw him as on that last morning, when in his prime, strong and gentle, at his rehearsal of "Enoch Arden," he said to me: "I am disappointed to the very heart, Clara, that you are not my Annie Lee."

He took his hat off, he drew his hand across his eyes. "I can't find her," he said, with that touch of pathos that made his voice irresistible; "no, I have not found her yet—they are not innocent and brave! They are bouncing, buxom creatures or they are whimpering little milk-sops. They are never fisher-maidens, flower-pure, yet strong as the salt of the sea! She loved them both, Clara, yet she was no more weak nor bad than when, with childish lips, she innocently promised to be 'a little wife to both' the angry lads—to Philip and young Enoch! Now your eyes are sea-eyes, and your voice—oh, I am disappointed! I thought I should find my Annie here!"

And so I see him now as I think with tender sorrow of the actor who was so strong and yet so weak—dear Ned Adams!

When Mr. Joseph Jefferson came to us I found his acting nothing less than a revelation. Here, in full perfection, was the style I had feebly, almost blindly been reaching for. This man, this poet of comedy, as he seemed to me, had so perfectly wedded nature to art that they were indeed one. Here again I found the immense value of "business" the most minute, the worth of restraint, if you had power to restrain, and learned that his perfect naturalness was the result of his exquisite art in cutting back and training nature's too great exuberance.

I was allowed to play Meenie, his daughter, in the play of "Rip Van Winkle," and my delight knew no bounds. He was very gentle and kind, he gave me pleasant words of praise for my work; he was very great, and—and his eyes were fine, and I approved of his chin, too, and I was, in fact, rapidly blending the actor and the man in one personality. In the last act, when kneeling at his feet, during our long wait upon the stage, I knelt and adored! and he—oh, Mr. Jefferson, Mr. Jefferson, that I should say it, but did you not hold my fingers unnecessarily close when you made some mild little remarks that were not in the play, but which filled my breast with quite outrageous joy, and pride—indeed, my crop of young affections, always rather a sparse growth, came very near being gathered into a small sheaf and laid at your feet.

Fortunately, I learned in time that there was an almost brand-new wife in the hotel next door, and I looked at him with big, reproachful eyes and kept my fingers to myself, and wisely put off the harvesting of my affections until some distant day.

Mind you, I was well within my rights in this matter. Girls always fall in love with stars—some fall in love with all of them, but that must be fatiguing; besides, as I said before, my affections were of such sparse growth they could not go round. Yet since I could honor thus but one star, I must say I look back with complete approval upon my early choice, and the shock to my heart did not prevent me from treasuring up some kindly words of advice from the artist-actor anent the making-up of eyes for the stage.

Said he to me one evening: "My girl, I want to speak to you about that 'make-up' you have on your eyes."

"Yes, sir?" I answered, interrogatively, feeling very hot and uncomfortable, "have I too much on?"

"Well, yes," he said, "I think you have, though you have much less than most women wear."

"Oh, yes," I hurriedly interposed, "there was a French dancer here who covered nearly a third of her eyelids with a broad blue-black band of pomatum, and she said——"

"Oh," he protested, "I know, she said it made the eyes large and lustrous, and as you see yourself in the glass it does seem to have that effect; but, by the way, what do you think of my eyes?"

And with truth and promptness, I made answer: "I think they're lovely."

My unexpected candor proved rather confusing, for for a moment he "Er-er-erd," and finally said: "I meant as a feature of acting, they are good acting eyes, aren't they? Well, you don't find them made up, do you? Now listen to me, child, always be guided as far as possible by nature. When you make up your face, you get powder on your eyelashes, nature made them dark, so you are free to touch the lashes themselves with ink or pomade, but you should not paint a great band about your eye, with a long line added at the corner to rob it of every bit of expression. And now as to the beauty this lining is supposed to bring, some night when you have time I want you to try a little experiment. Make up your face carefully, darken your brows and the lashes of one eye; as to the other eye, you must load the lashes with black pomade, then draw a black line beneath the eye, and a broad line on its upper lid, and a final line out from the corner. The result will be an added lustre to the made-up eye, a seeming gain in brilliancy; but now, watching your reflection all the time, move slowly backward from the glass, and an odd thing will happen, that made-up eye will gradually grow smaller and smaller, until, at a distance much less than that of the auditorium, it will really look more like a round black hole than anything else, and will be absolutely without expression. You have an admirable stage eye—an actor's eye, sensitive, expressive, well opened, it's a pity to spoil it with a load of blacking."

And I said, gratefully: "I'll never do it again, sir," and I never have, first from respect to a great actor's opinion, and gratitude for his kindly interest, later having tried his experiment, from the conviction that he was right, and finally because my tears would have sent inky rivulets down my cheeks had I indulged in black-banded eyes. So in all these years of work, just once, in playing a tricky, treacherous, plotting female, that I felt should be a close-eyed, thin-lipped creature, I have painted and elongated my eyes, otherwise I have kept my promise "not to do it again."

I met Mr. Jefferson in Paris at that dreadful time when he was threatened with blindness, and I never shall forget his gentle patience, his marvelous courage. That was a day of real rejoicing to me, when the news came that his sight was saved. Blindness coming upon any man is a horror, but to a man who can see nature as Joseph Jefferson sees her it would have been an almost incredible cruelty.

To be discarded by the public, that is the bête noire, the unconquerable dread and terror of the actor. To fail in the great struggle for supremacy is nothing compared to the agony of falling after the height has once been won.

Few people can think of the infamous casting down of the great column Vendôme without a shiver of pain—the smashing of the memorial tablet, the shattering of the statue, these are sights to shrink from, yet what does such shrinking amount to when compared to the pain of seeing a human being thrust from the sunlight of public popularity into the darkness of obscurity?

I was witness once to the discrowning of an actress, and if I could forget the anguish of her eyes, the pallor beneath her rouge, I would be a most grateful woman.

She had been handsome in her prime, handsome in the regular-featured, statuesque fashion so desirable for an actress of tragic parts; but Mrs. P—— (for I shall call her only by that initial, as it seems to me that naming her fully would be unkind) had reached, yes, had passed, middle age and had wandered far into distant places, had known much sorrow, and, alas, for her, had not noticed that her profession, like everything alive, like the great God-made world itself, moved, moved, moved! So not noticing, she, poor thing, stood still in her method of work, loyally doing her best in the style of acting that had been so intensely admired in her triumphant youth.

She had most successfully starred in Cleveland years before, but at the time I speak of she was returning from distant parts, widowed and poor, yet quite, quite confident of her ability to please the public, and with plans all made to star two, possibly three, years, long enough to secure a little home and tiny income, when she would retire gracefully from the sight of the regretful public. Meantime she entreated Mr. Ellsler, if possible, to give her an engagement, that she might earn money enough to carry her to New York and see the great agents there.

By some unlooked-for chance the very next week was open, and rather tremulously as manager, but kind-heartedly as man, Mr. Ellsler engaged her for that week.

The city was billed accordingly: "Mrs. P——, the Queen of Tragedy!"—"The celebrated Mrs. P——, Cleveland's great favorite!"—"Especial engagement of Mrs. P——!" etc., etc.

I had a tiny part in the old Grecian tragedy she opened in. I came early, as was my wont, and when dressed went out to look at the house—good heavens! I gasped. Poor? it was worse than poor. Bad? it was worse than bad. My heart sank for her as I recalled how, that morning, she had asked, with a little nonchalant air of: "It doesn't really matter, of course, but do the people here throw their flowers still, or do they send them up over the footlights?" Flowers? Oh, poor Mrs. P——!

The overture had ended before she came out of her dressing-room, so she had no warning of what the house was like. She was all alight with pleasant anticipation. At a little distance she looked remarkably well; her Grecian robes hung gracefully, her hair was arranged and filleted correctly and becomingly, her movements were assured; only looking at the deeply drawn lines about her mouth, made one regret that her opening speeches referred so distinctly to her "dewy youth"; but Cleveland was well used to that sort of contradiction, and I might have taken heart of grace for her if only she had not looked so very pleased and happy.

The opening scene of the old-fashioned play was well on when the star appeared, and smiling graciously—faced the almost empty house. She halted—she gave the sort of sudden gasp that a dash of icy water in the face might cause. The humiliating half-dozen involuntary hand-claps that had greeted her fell into silence as she came fully into view, where she stood dismayed, stricken—for she was an old actress and she read the signs aright, she knew this was the great taboo.

Her face whitened beneath her rouge, her lips moved silently. One moment she turned her back squarely upon the audience, for she knew her face was anguished, and moved by the same instinct that makes an Indian draw the blanket across his dying face, or the wounded animal seek deepest solitude, she sought to hide her suffering from the coldly observant few.

With the light stricken from her eyes they looked dull and sunken, while every nerve and muscle of her poor face seemed a-quiver. It was a dreadful moment for us who looked on and understood.

Presently she clinched her hands, drew a long breath, and facing about, took up the burden of the play, and in cold, flat tones began her part. She did her best in the old, stilted declamatory style, that was as dead as many of the men and women were who used to applaud it. Once only the audience warmed to her a trifle, and as she accepted their half-hearted "call," her sad eyes roved over the empty spaces of the house, a faint, tired smile touched her lips, while two great tears coursed down her cheeks. It was the moment of renunciation! They denied her right to the crown of popularity, and she, with that piteous smile, bowed to their verdict, as an actress must.

At the curtain's final fall her stardom was over. She went very quietly to Mr. Ellsler and gave him back the engagement he had granted her, saying, simply: "They do not want me any longer."

A short time after that, she sat one evening in Mr. Ellsler's family box, and with wide, astonished eyes gazed at the packed house which greeted the jig, the clog, the song, the banjo of Miss Lotta, whose innocent deviltries were bringing her a fortune, and when, in response to a "call," instead of appearing, Miss Lotta thrust her foot and ankle out beyond the curtain and wriggled them at the delighted crowd, poor Mrs. P—— drew her hand across her forehead and said, in bewildered tones: "But—I don't understand!"

No, she could not understand, and Miss Lotta had not yet faced New York, hence John Brougham, the witty, wise, and kindly Irish gentleman, had not yet had his opportunity of summing up the brilliant and erratic star, as he did later on in these words: "Act, acting, actress? what are you thinking of? she's no actress, she's—why, she's a little dramatic cocktail!" which was a delicious Broughamism and truthful withal.

But that sad night, when Mrs. P—— first set her feet in the path of obscurity, I took to myself a lesson, and said: "While I live, I will move. I will not stand still in my satisfaction, should success ever come to me—but will try to keep my harness bright by action, in at least an effort to keep abreast with the world, for verily, verily, it does move!"

There were few stars with whom I took greater pleasure in acting than with Mr. Lawrence Barrett. I sometimes wonder if even now this profession really knows what great reason it has to be proud of him. He was a man respected by all, admired by many, and if loved but by few, theirs was a love so profound and so tender it amply sufficed.

We are a censorious people, and just as our greatest virtue is generosity in giving, so our greatest fault is the eagerness with which we seek out the mote in our neighbor's eye, without feeling the slightest desire for the removal of the beam in our own eye. Thus one finds that the first and clearest memory actors have of Mr. Barrett is of his irascible temper and a certain air of superiority, not of his erudition, of the high position he won socially as well as artistically, of the almost Titanic struggle of his young manhood with adverse circumstances.

Nor does that imply the slightest malice on their part. Actors, as a family trait, have a touch of childishness about them which they come by honestly enough. We all know the farther we get from infancy the weaker the imagination grows. Now it is imagination that makes the man an actor, so it is not wonderful if with the powerful creative fancy of childhood he should also retain a touch of its petulance and self-consciousness. Thus to many actors Mr. Barrett's greatness is lost sight of in the memory of some dogmatic utterance or sharp reproval that wounded self-love.

It would seem like presumption for me to offer any word of praise for the artistic work of his later years; the world remembers it; the world knows, too, how high he climbed, how secure was his position; but twice I have heard the stories of his earlier years—some from the lips of his brave wife, once from the lips of that beloved brother Joe, who was yet his dread and sorrow—and at each telling my throat ached at the pain of it, while my nerves thrilled with admiration for such endurance, such splendid determination.

A paradox is, I believe, something seemingly absurd, yet true in fact. In that case I was not so very far wrong, in spite of general laughter, when, after my first rehearsal with him, I termed Mr. Barrett a man of cold enthusiasm. "But," one cried to me, "you stupid—that's a paradox! don't you see your words contradict each other?"

"Well," I answered, with shame-faced obstinacy, "perhaps they do, but they are not contradicted by him. You all call him icy-cold, and I know he is truly enthusiastic over the possibilities of this play, so that makes what I call cold enthusiasm, however par-a-paradoxy (?) it sounds."

And now, after all the years, I can approve that childish judgment. He was a man whose intellectual enthusiasm was backed by a cold determination that would never let him say "die" while he had breath in his body and a stage to rehearse on.

I have a miserable memory for names, and often in the middle of a remark the name I intended to mention will pass from my remembrance utterly; so, all my life, I have had the very bad habit of trying to make my hearers understand whom I meant by imitating or mentioning some trait peculiar to the nameless one, and I generally succeeded.

As, for instance, when I wished to tell whom I had seen taking away a certain book, I said: "It was Mr.—er—er, oh, you know, Mr.—er, why this man," and I pulled in my head like a turtle and hitched up my shoulders to my ears, and the anxious owner cried: "Oh, Thompson has it, has he?" Thompson having, so far as we could see, no neck at all—my pantomime suggested his name.

Everyone can recall the enormous brow of Mr. Barrett, and how beneath his great, burning eyes his cheeks hollowed suddenly in, thinning down to his sensitive mouth. I was on the stage in New Orleans, the first morning of my engagement there (I was under Mr. Daly's management, but he had loaned me for a fortnight), and I started out with: "Mr. Daly said to please ask Mr.——," away went the name—goodness gracious, should I forget my own name next!

The stage manager suggested: "Mr. Rogers."

"No, oh, no! I mean Mr.—er—er," and I trailed off helplessly.

"Mr. Seymour?" offered a lady.

"No, no! that's not it!" I cried; "why, goodness mercy me! you all know whom I mean—the—the actor with the hungry eyes?"

"Oh, Barrett!" they shouted, all save one voice, that with a mighty laugh cried out: "That's my brother Larry, God bless him! no one could miss that description, for sure he looks as hungry to-day as ever he did when he felt hungry to his heart's core!"

And so it was that I first met poor Joe Barrett, who worshipped the brother whose sore torment he was. For this great, broad-shouldered, ruddy-faced fellow with the boyish laugh had ever in his veins the craving for liquor—that awful inherited appetite that can nullify prayer and break down the most fixed determination.

"Ah!" he cried to me, "no one, no one can ever know how good Larry has been to me, for while he is fighting and struggling to rise, every little while some lapse of mine drags him back a bit. Yet he never casts me off—never disowns me. He has had to discharge me for the sake of discipline here, but he has re-engaged me. He has sent me away, but he has taken me back again. I promise, and fail to keep my promise. I fall, and he picks me up. Through the cursed papers I have dragged my brother through the mud, but the sweet Saviour could hardly forgive me more fully than Larry does, for, look you, he never forgets that I am the son of my father, who was accursed before me, while he is the son of our poor mother—blessed be her name! It isn't that I don't try. I keep straight until the agony of longing begins to turn into a mad desire to do bodily harm to someone—anyone, and then, fearing worse, I drink my fill, and the papers find me out, and are not content to tell of the disgraceful condition of Joseph Barrett, but must add, always, 'the brother of the prominent actor, Mr. Lawrence Barrett.' Poor Larry! poor little delicate chap that he used to be, with his big, brainy head—too heavy for his weak neck and frail body to carry."

And then he told me of their sorrowful life, their poverty. The often-idle father and his dislike for the delicate boy, whose only moment of happiness was when the weary mother, the poor supper over, sat for a little to breathe and rest, and held his heavy head upon her loving breast, while Joe sang his songs or told all the happenings of the day.

That happy Joe, who had no pride and was quite as satisfied without a seat to his small trousers as with one! Then he told me how hard it was for Lawrence to learn; how he had to grind and grind at the simplest lesson, but once having acquired it, it was his for life.

"Why, even now," said he, "in confidence I'm telling you, my brother is studying like a little child at French, and it does seem that he cannot learn it. He works so desperately over it, a doctor has warned him he must choose between French and his many 'parts' or break down from overwork. But he will go on hammering at his parlez-vous until he learns them or dies trying."

"If you were to live with your brother, might not that help to keep you strong?" I asked.

"Now, my dear little woman," he smiled, "Larry is human, in some respects, if he is almost God-like toward me. Remember he has a young family now, and though his wife is as good as gold and always patient with me, I am not the kind of example a man would care to place before his little ones, and as Lawrence is devoured with ambition for them and their future, he rightly guards them from too close contact with the drag and curse of his own life, in whom he, and he alone, can see the sturdy tow-headed brother of the old boyish days, who saved him from many and many a kick and thump his delicate body could ill have borne."

Joe told me of his dead wife—Viola Crocker that was—the niece of Mrs. Bowers and Mrs. Conway; of their happiness and their misery. Describing himself as having been "in heaven or in hell—without any betwixts and betweens." His devotion to me was very great. He was "hard-up" for money, as the men express it, but he would manage to bring me a single rose or one bunch of grapes or a half-dozen mushrooms or some such small offering every day; and learning of his bitter mortification because he could not hire a carriage to take me out to see the curious old French cemetery, I made him supremely happy by expressing a desire to ride in one of those funny bob-tailed, mule-drawn street-cars—the result being a trip by my mother, Mr. Barrett, and myself to the famous cemetery.

I don't know that I ever heard anyone sing Irish and Scottish ballads more tenderly, more pathetically than did Joe Barrett, and as my mother was very fond of old songs, he used to sit and sing one after another for her. That day there was no one in the crawling little car but we three, and presently he began to sing. But, oh, what was it that he sang? Irish, unmistakably—a lament, rising toward its close into the keen of some clan. It wrung the very heart.

"Don't!" I exclaimed. My mother's face was turned away, my throat ached, even Joe's eyes had filled. "What is it?" I asked.

"I don't know its name," he answered, "I have always put it on programmes as 'A Lament.' I learned it from an Irish emigrant-lad, who was from the North, and who was dying fast from consumption and home-hunger. Is not that wail chilling? As he gave the song it seemed like a message from the dying."

At the end of our stroll among the flowers and trees and past those strange stone structures that look so like serious-minded bake-ovens, having to wait for a car, we sat on a stone bench, and in that quiet city of the dead Joe's voice rose, tenderly reverent, in that simple air that was yet an anguish of longing, followed by a wail for the dead.

My mother wept silently. I said, softly: "It's a plaint and a farewell," and Joe brought his eyes back from the great cross, blackly silhouetted against the flaming sky, and slowly said: "Beloved among women, it is a message—a message from the dying or the dead, believe that."

And a time came when—well, when almost I did believe that.

Later on, when Mr. Barrett stood second only to Mr. Booth in his profession, well established, well off, well dressed, polished and refined of manner, aye, and genial, too, to those he liked, I came by accident upon a most gracious act of his and, following it up, found him deep in a conspiracy to deceive a stricken woman into receiving the aid her piteous determination to stand alone made impossible to offer openly. I looked at the generous, prosperous, intellectual, intensely active gentleman, surrounded by clever wife and the pretty, thoroughly educated daughters, who were chaperoned in all their walks to and from park or music-lesson or shopping-trip, and I wondered at the distance little "Larry," with the heavy head and frail body, had traveled, and bowed respectfully to such magnificent energy.

Even then there arose a cry from the profession that Mr. Barrett was dictatorial, that he assumed airs of superiority. Mr. Barrett was wrapped up, soul and body, in the proper production of the play in hand. He was keenly observant and he was sensitive. When an actor had his mind fixed upon a smoke or a glass of beer, and cared not one continental dollar whether the play failed or succeeded, so long as he got his "twenty dollars per—," Mr. Barrett knew it, and became "dictatorial" in his effort to force the man into doing his work properly. I worked with him, both as a nobody and as somebody, and I know that an honest effort to comprehend and carry out his wishes was recognized and appreciated.

As for his airs of superiority—well, the fact is he was superior to many. He was intellectual and he was a student to the day of his death. When work at the theatre was over he turned to study. He never was well acquainted with Tom and Dick, nor yet with Harry. His back fitted a lamp-post badly. He would not have known how "to jolly the crowd." He was not a full, voluminous, and ready story-teller for the boys, who called him cold and hard. God knows he had needed the coldness and the so-called hardness, or how could he have endured the privations of the long journey from his weary mother's side to this position of honor.

Cold, hard, dictatorial, superior? Well, there is a weak lean-on-somebody sort of woman, who will love any man who will feed and shelter her—she doesn't count. But when a clear-minded, business-like, clever woman, a wife for many years, loves her husband with the tenderest sentiment and devotion, I'm ready to wager something that it was tenderness and devotion in the husband that first aroused like sentiments in the wife.

Mrs. Barrett was shrewd, far-seeing, business-like—a devoted and watchful mother, but her love for her husband had still the freshness, the delicate sentiment of young wifehood. When she thought fit, she bullied him shamefully; when she thought fitter, she "guyed" him unmercifully. Think of that! And it was delightful to see the great, solemn-eyed personification of dignity smilingly accepting her buffets.

But, oh, to hear that wife tell of the sorrows and trials they had faced together, of their absurd makeshifts, of their small triumphs over poverty, of Lawrence's steady advance in his profession, of that beautiful day when they moved into a little house all by themselves, when he became, as he laughingly boasted, "a householder, not a forlorn, down-trodden boarder!"

Their family, besides themselves, then consisted of one little girl and Lawrence's beloved old mother, and he had a room to study in in peace, and the two women talked and planned endlessly about curtains and furniture, and—oh, well, about some more very small garments that would, God willing, be needed before a very great while. And one day Lawrence looked about his little table, and said: "It's too good, it can't last, it can't!" and the women kissed him and laughed at him; yet all the time he was right, it did not last. An awful bolt seemed to fall from the blue sky. It was one of those pitiful disasters that sometimes come upon the very old—particularly to those who have endured much, suffered much, as had the elder Mrs. Barrett in the past.

I wept as I heard the story of the devoted son's dry-eyed agony, of the awful fears his condition aroused in the minds of those close to him, and then suddenly she, the wife, had been stricken down, and her danger and that of the tiny babe had brought him to his old self again.

He worked on then for some months, grateful for the sparing of his dear ones, when quite suddenly and painlessly the stricken old mother passed from sleep to life everlasting. Then when Joseph was to be summoned—Joe who worshipped the mother's footprint in the dust—he was not to be found. He had fallen again into disgrace, had been discharged, had disappeared, no one knew whither.

"Oh, dear Father!" cried Mrs. Barrett, "what did not Lawrence suffer for Joe! knowing what his agony would be when he knew all—but we could do no more. The funeral took place. White as marble, Lawrence sent us all home, and himself waited till the last clod of earth was piled upon the grave; then waited till the men had gone, waited to kneel and pray a moment before leaving the old mother there alone. And as he knelt he noted how nearly dark it was, and thought he must not linger long or the gates would be locked upon him. As he rose from his knees, he was startled to see, through the dusk, a tall form coming toward him. It would dodge behind a monument, and after a moment's pause would come a little nearer. Suddenly the drooping, lurching figure became familiar to him. With a groan he hid himself behind a tombstone and waited—waited until suspicion became certainty, and he knew that the bent, weary funeral guest was his brother, Joe!

"He held his peace until the wanderer found his way along the darkening path to that pathetic stretch of freshly broken earth, where, with an exceeding bitter cry, he flung his arms above his head and fell all his length along the grave that held the sweetest and the holiest thing God had ever given him, an honest, loving mother, and clutched the damp clods in his burning hands, and gasped out: 'Oh, mother! I have hungered and I have tramped with the curse upon me, too; I have hungered and tramped so far, so far, hoping just to be in time to see your dear face once more, and now they've shut you away from me, from the bad boy you never turned your patient eyes away from! Oh, mother! whatever can I do without you, all alone! all alone!'

"At that child-like cry from the broken man, prostrate on the grave, Lawrence Barrett's heart turned to water, and kneeling down he lifted to his breast the tear-blurred, drink-blemished face of his brother, and kissed him as his mother might have done. Thus they prayed together for the repose of the soul of their beloved, and then, with his arm about the wanderer, to steady his failing steps, Lawrence led him to his little home, and, as they entered, he turned and said: 'Joe, can't you take back those words, "all alone," can't you?' and Joe nodded his head, and throwing his arms about his brother's neck, answered: 'Never alone, while my little brother Larry lives and forgives!'"