ugh, of the _Globe-Democrat_, that
gentleman remarked to him: "Mr. Forrest, I never in my life saw you
play Lear so well as you did to-night." Whereupon the veteran almost
indignantly replied, rising slowly and laboriously from his chair to
his full height: "Play Lear! What do you mean, sir? I do not play
Lear! I play Hamlet, Richard, Shylock, Virginius, if you please, but
by God, sir, I _am_ Lear!"

Nor was this wholly imaginative. Ingratitude of the basest kind had
rent his soul. Old friends were gone from him; new friends were but
half-hearted. His hearthstone was desolate. The public, to whom he had
given his best years, was becoming impatient of his infirmities. The
royalty of his powers he saw by degrees torn from his decaying form.
Other kings had arisen on the stage, to whom his old subjects now
showed a reverence once all his own. The mockery of his diadem only
remained. A wreck of the once proud man who had despised all weakness,
and had ruled his kingdom with imperial sway, he now stood alone.
Broken in health and in spirit, deserted, forgotten, unkinged, he
might well exclaim, "_I am Lear!_"

CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN

By DUTTON COOK

(1816-1876)

[Illustration: Charlotte Cushman.]

The Pilgrim Fathers figure in American pedigrees almost as frequently
and persistently as Norman William and his followers appear at the
trunk of our family-trees. Certainly, the Mayflower must have carried
very many heads of houses across the Atlantic. It was not in the
Mayflower, however, but in the Fortune, a smaller vessel, of
fifty-five tons, that Robert Cushman, Nonconformist, the founder of
the Cushman family in America, sailed from England, for the better
enjoyment of liberty of conscience and freedom of religion. In the
seventh generation from Robert Cushman appeared Elkanah Cushman, who
took to wife Mary Eliza, daughter of Erasmus Babbit, Jr., lawyer,
musician, and captain in the army. Of this marriage was born Charlotte
Saunders Cushman, in Richmond Street, Boston, July 23, 1816, and other
children.

Charlotte Cushman says of herself: "I was born a tom-boy." She had a
passion for climbing trees and for breaking open dolls' heads. She
could not make dolls' clothes, but she could manufacture their
furniture--could do anything with tools. "I was very destructive to
toys and clothes, tyrannical to brothers and sister, but very social,
and a great favorite with other children. Imitation was a prevailing
trait." T