Prune Street Theatre, Philadelphia, and
giving a successful performance of "Richard III.," which not only
pleased the audience, but brought him a few dollars of profit. He made
many attempts to secure a regular engagement in one of the Western
circuits, where experience could be gained; and at last, after many
denials, he was employed by Collins and Jones to play leading juvenile
parts in their theatres in Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, and Lexington.
Thus, at the age of sixteen or eighteen, Edwin Forrest enrolled
himself as a regular member of a theatrical company, and broke loose
from trade forever.

Of his professional progress here we have but poor accounts. He seems
to have been very popular, and to have had an experience larger than
he had heretofore enjoyed. He played with the elder Conway, and was
affected by the grandeur of that actor's Othello, a study which served
Forrest well when in late years he inherited the character.

Jane Placide, who inspired the first love of Edwin Forrest, was an
actress who combined talent, beauty, and goodness. Her character would
have softened the asperities of his, and led him by a calmer path to
those grand elevations toward which Providence had directed his
footsteps. Baffled in love, however, and believing Caldwell to be his
rival and enemy, he challenged him; but was rebuked by the silent
contempt of his manager, whom the impulsive and disappointed lover
"posted."

The hard novitiate of Edwin Forrest was now drawing near its close.
Securing a stock engagement with Charles Gilfert, manager of the
Albany Theatre, he opened there in the early fall, and played for the
first time with Edmund Kean, then on his second visit to America. The
meeting with this extraordinary man and the attention he received from
him were foremost among the directing influences of Forrest's life. To
his last hour he never wearied of singing the praises of Kean, whose
genius filled the English-speaking world with admiration. Two men more
unlike in mind and body can scarcely be imagined. Until now Forrest
had seen no actor who represented in perfection the impassioned school
of which Kean was the master. He could not have known Cooke, even in
the decline of that great tragedian's power, and the little giant was
indeed a revelation. He played Iago to Kean's Othello, Titus to his
Brutus, and Richmond to his Richard III.

In the interval which preceded the opening of the Bowery Theatre, New
York, Forrest appe