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