the
room was fairly large and as the mouldings ran entirely around it, we
had plenty of space for even our very elastic love for the heroes and
heroines of the footlights.

Edwin Forrest ended his stage career just before our time, but I know
that Richard at least saw him and heard that wonderful voice of
thunder. It seems that one day, while my mother and Richard were
returning home, they got on a street-car which already held the great
tragedian. At the moment Forrest was suffering severely from gout and
had his bad leg stretched well out before him. My brother, being very
young at the time and never very much of a respecter of persons,
promptly fell over the great man's gouty foot. Whereat (according to
my mother, who was always a most truthful narrator) Forrest broke forth
in a volcano of oaths and for blocks continued to hurl thunderous
broadsides at Richard, which my mother insisted included the curse of
Rome and every other famous tirade in the tragedian's repertory which
in any way fitted the occasion. Nearly forty years later my father
became the president of the Edwin Forrest Home, the greatest charity
ever founded by an actor for actors, and I am sure by his efforts of
years on behalf of the institution did much to atone for Richard's
early unhappy meeting with the greatest of all the famous
leather-lunged tragedians.

From his youth my father had always been a close student of the classic
and modern drama, and throughout his life numbered among his friends
many of the celebrated actors and actresses of his time. In those
early days Booth used to come to rather formal luncheons, and at all
such functions Richard and I ate our luncheon in the pantry, and when
the great meal was nearly over in the dining-room we were allowed to
come in in time for the ice-cream and to sit, figuratively, at the feet
of the honored guest and generally, literally, on his or her knees.
Young as I was in those days I can readily recall one of those
lunch-parties when the contrast between Booth and Dion Boucicault
struck my youthful mind most forcibly. Booth, with his deep-set, big
black eyes, shaggy hair, and lank figure, his wonderfully modulated
voice, rolled out his theories of acting, while the bald-headed, rotund
Boucicault, his twinkling eyes snapping like a fox-terrier's,
interrupted the sonorous speeches of the tragedian with crisp, witty
criticisms or "asides" that made the rest of the company laugh and even
broug