“My dear Mr. Forrest,—I understand from my aunt, Mrs. Fisher, that during my absence from America, and when she had become destitute from the effects of the war, you were kind enough to let her have one hundred dollars.

“My being nearly related to the lady sufficiently explains why I enclose you the sum you so generously gave.

“Permit me to offer my condolence in your late sad loss, and to ask pardon for addressing you at such a time.

“Dear Mr. Jefferson,—I received your note of 13th inst., covering a check for one hundred dollars, in payment of a like sum loaned by me, some years since, to your relative, Mrs. Fisher.

“I have no claim whatever on you for the liquidation of this debt. Yet, as the motive is apparent which prompts you to the kindly act, I make no cavil in accepting its payment from you.

“With thanks for the touching sympathy you express in my late bereavement, I am sincerely yours,

When an actor vanquishes the jealous instinct of his tribe and really admires another, his professional training gives a distinct relish and certainty to his praise. When Garrick heard of the decease of Mrs. Theophilus Cibber, a sister of Arne the musician, he said, “Then Tragedy is dead on one side.” Also when seeing Carlin Bertinazzi in a piece where, having been beaten by his master, he threatened him with one hand while rubbing his wounded loins with the other, Garrick was so delighted with the truthfulness of the pantomime that he cried, “See, the back of Carlin has its expression and physiognomy.” Old Quin had a strong aversion to Mrs. Bellamy, and a conviction that she would fail. But at the close of the first act, as she came off the stage, he caught her in his arms, exclaiming, generously, “Thou art a divine creature, and the true spirit is in thee.” Within a year of the expulsion of Mrs. Siddons from Drury Lane as an uninteresting performer, Henderson declared that “she was an actress who had never had an equal and would never have a superior.” She remembered this with deep gratitude to her dying day; and when his death had left his family poor she played Belvidera in Covent Garden for their benefit.

Forrest was abundantly capable of this same liberal spirit. No admirer of Henry Placide in his best day could be more enthusiastic in his eulogy than Forrest was, declaring that in his line he had no living equal. He said the same also of the Jesse Rural and two or three other parts of William R. Blake. He had likewise a profound admiration for the romantic and electrifying Othello of Gustavus Vasa Brooke. And of the performance of Cassio in Othello and of Cabrero in the Broker of Bogota, by William Wheatley, he said, “They were two of the most perfect pieces of acting I ever saw. One night when he had performed the part of Cabrero better than he ever had done it before, producing a sensation intense enough in the applause it drew to gratify the pride of any player, he said to me, as he left the stage, ‘Never again will I play that part.’ And, surely enough, he never did. The reason why was a mystery I have not been able to this day to fathom.”

Forrest once said, “An intelligent, sympathetic actor, who resists the social temptations of his profession and keeps dignity of character and high purpose, ought to be the most charming of companions. In a great many cases this is the fact. With their insight into character, their power of interpreting even the most unpurposed signals, the secrets of society are more open to them than to others, and they have more adventures. This naturally makes them interesting.” He gave two examples in illustration. When he was playing in England, he and James Sheridan Knowles became warm friends. Knowles had often seen Mrs. Siddons act. Forrest asked him what was the mysterious effect she produced in her celebrated sleep-walking scene of Lady Macbeth. He said, “I have read all the high-flown descriptions of the critics, and they fall short. I want you to tell me in plain blunt phrase just what impression she produced on you.” Knowles replied, with a sort of shudder, as if the mere remembrance terrified him still, “Well, sir, I smelt blood! I swear that I smelt blood!” Forrest added that the whole life of that amazing actress by Campbell was not worth so much to him as this one Hogarthean stroke by Knowles.

The other anecdote related to an incident which happened to John McCullough, who for several years had been playing second parts to Forrest. He was staying in Washington. Two or three nights before the assassination of President Lincoln he was awakened by tears falling on his face from the eyes of some one standing over him. Looking up, he saw Wilkes Booth, and exclaimed, “Why, what is the matter?” “My God,” replied the unhappy man, already burdened with his monstrous crime, and speaking in a tone of long-drawn melancholy indescribably pathetic, “My God, how peacefully you were sleeping! I cannot sleep.”

Another element of strong interest in actors, giving them an imaginative attraction, is the obvious but profound symbolism of their art, the analogies of scenic life and human life. Harley, while playing Bottom in Midsummer Night’s Dream, was stricken with apoplexy. Carried home, the last words he ever spoke were the words in his part, “I feel an exposition to sleep coming over me.” Immediately it was so, and he slept forever. The aged Macklin attended the funeral of Barry. Looking into the grave, he murmured, “Poor Spranger!” One would have led him away, but the old man said, mournfully, “Sir, I am at my rehearsal; do not disturb my reverie.” The elements of the art of acting are the applied elements of the science of human nature. They are the same on the stage as in life, save that there they are systematized and pronounced, set in relief, and consequently excite a more vivid interest. How rich it would have been to share in the fellowship of Lekain and Garrick when in the Champs Elysées they practised the representation of drunkenness! “How is that?” said Lekain. “Very well,” replied Garrick. “You are all drunk except your left leg.”

Such works as Colley Cibber’s Apology, the several lives of Garrick, Boaden’s Life of Kemble, Macklin’s Memoirs, Campbell’s Life of Mrs. Siddons, Galt’s Lives of the Players, Proctor’s Life of Kean, Collier’s Annals of the Stage, Doran’s His Majesty’s Servants, were familiar to Forrest. His memory was well stored with their contents. He had reflected carefully and much on the general topics of which they treat, and he conversed on them with eloquence and with wisdom. He cherished an eager interest in everything pertaining to his profession viewed in its most comprehensive aspect. His intelligent and profound enthusiasm for the theatre gave him an entire faith that the drama is destined to flourish as long as human nature shall be embodied in men. Its seeming eclipse by cheaper and coarser attractions he held to be but temporary. Its perversion and degradation in meaningless spectacles and prurient dances will pass by, and its restoration to its own high mission, the exhibition of the grandest elements of the soul in the noblest situations, the teaching of the most beautiful and sublime lessons by direct exemplification in breathing life, will give it, ere many generations pass, a glory and a popular charm it has never yet known. Then we may expect to see a great purification and enrichment of the subject-matter presented on the stage. The mere animal affections will cease to have an exaggerated and morbid attention paid to them. Justice will be done to the generic moral sentiments of man, and to his noblest historic and ideal types. The passions of love of truth and spiritual aspiration will dilate in treatment, those of individual jealousy and social ambition dwindle. Instructive and inspiring plays will be constructed out of the veracious materials furnished by characters and careers like those of Columbus and Galileo.

Certainly the realization of such a vision is a great desideratum; because the theatre is a sort of universal Church of Humanity, where good and evil are shown in their true colors without formalism or cant. Its influence—unlike that of sectarian enclosures—is to draw all its attendants together in common sympathies towards the good and fair, and in common antipathies for the foul and cruel. Men are more open and generous in their pleasures than in their pains. Places of public amusement are the first to vibrate to the notes of public joy or grief, defeat or triumph. Telegrams announcing victories or calamities are read from the stage. Theatres are sure to be decked on great festival or pageant days, the popular pulse beating strongest there.

The taste for dramatic representations is native and ineradicable in man. It is a fixed passion with man to love to see the passions of men exhibited in plot and action, and to watch the mutual workings of characters on one another through their different manners of behavior. Just now, it is true, the great, complex, terribly exciting and exacting drama of real life, revealed to us in the newspaper and the novel and the telegraph, so fastens and drains our sympathies that we lack the ideal freedom and restful leisure to enjoy the stage drama so eagerly as it was enjoyed at an earlier and simpler time. But this will not always be so;—

Forrest looked for a revival, at no remote date, in America and Europe, of the ancient Greek pride and joy in athletic exercises and the development of nude strength and beauty. The reflex influence from such a revival, he imagined, would flood the stage with a new lustre, making it a resplendent and exalted centre for the inspiring exposure to the public of the perfected models of every form of human excellence. Then the gymnasium, the circus, the race-course, dance, music, song, and the intellectual emulations of the academy may all be grouped around the theatre and find their dazzling climax in the scenic drama, made religious once more as it was in the palmiest day of Greece.