he breezy
silence, remembrance of the busy scenes of brilliant life wherein she
used to move--the pictured stage, the crowded theatre, the wild plaudits
of a delighted multitude--came strongly on the mind, and asked, in
perplexity and sadness, what was the good of it all. To her but little.
Fame and wealth were her cold rewards, after much privation and labour;
but she found neither love nor happiness, and the fullest years of her
life were blighted with the shadow of fatal disease and impending death.
To the world, however, her career was of great and enduring benefit. She
was a noble interpreter of the noble minds of the past, and thus she
helped to educate the men and women of her time--to ennoble them in
mood, to strengthen them in duty, to lift them up in hope of
immortality. She did not live in vain. It is not likely that the
American people will ever suffer her name to drift quite out of their
remembrance: it is a name that never can be erased from the rolls of
honourable renown.

Charlotte Cushman was born on July 23, 1816, and she died on February
12, 1876. Boston was the place of her birth and of her death. She lived
till her sixtieth year and she was for forty years an actress. Her youth
was one of poverty and the early years of her professional career were
full of labour, trouble, heart-ache, and conflict. The name of Cushman
signifies "cross-bearer," and certainly Charlotte Cushman did indeed
bear the cross, long before and long after, she wore the crown. At first
she was a vocalist, but, having broken her voice by misusing it, she
was compelled to quit the lyric and adopt the dramatic stage, and when
nineteen years old she came out, at New Orleans, as Lady Macbeth. After
that she removed to New York and for the next seven years she battled
with adverse fortune in the theatres of that city and of Albany and
Philadelphia. From 1837 to 1840 she was under engagement at the old Park
as walking lady and for general utility business. "I became aware," she
wrote, "that one could never sail a ship by entering at the cabin
windows; he must serve and learn his trade before the mast. This was the
way that I would henceforth learn mine."

Her first remarkable hits were made in Emilia, Meg Merrilies, and
Nancy--the latter in _Oliver Twist_. But it was not till she met with
Macready that the day of her deliverance from drudgery really dawned.
They acted together in New York in 1842 and 1843, and in Boston in 1844,
and