Venice Preserved," when some one said to him "You look
like Hamlet, why not play it?" It was, however, some time before he
ventured to assume the part. In October, 1852, the father and son
parted, not to meet again. The elder Booth went to New Orleans, and
after playing for a week took passage in a steamboat on the
Mississippi, and catching a severe cold succumbed after a few days'
illness and died. For a while after his father's death Edwin suffered
greatly from poverty and from the hardships of his precarious life,
unsustained as he now was by the affection and encouragement of a
father who, with all his faults, and in all the misfortunes brought on
by serious ill-health and some aberrations that were the effect of
ill-health had always been an affectionate and true friend. But a
talent such as Edwin Booth possessed, united to a high character, and
to a dauntless spirit, could not long be hid, and in a short time his
name began to be heard of as that of one destined to great ends. In
1854 he went to Australia as a member of Laura Keene's company. He had
made a deep impression in California, acting such parts as Richard
III., Shylock, Macbeth, and Hamlet, and on returning there from
Australia that first impression was greatly strengthened. On leaving
San Francisco he received various testimonials showing the high esteem
in which his acting was held by the educated part of the community;
but throughout Edwin Booth's career, the interest he excited in the
vast audiences that followed him was by no means confined to the
self-styled "best people." Though he never "played to the gallery,"
the heart of the gallery was as much with him as the heart of the
boxes, and he knew the value of its rapt silence as well as of its
stormy voices.

In Boston, in 1857, he played Sir Giles Overreach, in Massinger's "A
New Way to Pay Old Debts," and the profound impression he made in it
confirmed him in his purpose to devote himself to tragic acting. The
story of an actor's life is seldom eventful, and Mr. Booth's history,
after his first assured success, is the record of a long line of
triumphs without a failure. The most remarkable of these triumphs was
at the Winter Garden Theatre in New York, where he acted Hamlet to
large and ever-increasing audiences for over one hundred successive
nights, that is, from November 21, 1864, to March 24, 1865. On this
occasion a gold medal was presented to the actor by friends and
admirers in New York;