ackamoor that took by the thr-r-r-oat the
circumcised dog in Aleppo, and told us about it in the old Boston
Theatre. In the course of a fortnight, if I care to cross the water, I
can see Mademoiselle Dejazet in the same parts I saw her in under Louis
Philippe, and be charmed by the same grace and vivacity which delighted
my grandmother (if she was in Paris, and went to see her in the part of
Fanchon toute seule at the Theatre des Capucines) in the days when the
great Napoleon was still only First Consul.

The graveyard and the stage are pretty much the only places where you
can expect to find your friends--as you left them, five and twenty or
fifty years ago. I have noticed, I may add, that old theatre-goers bring
back the past with their stories more vividly than men with any other
experiences. There were two old New-Yorkers that I used to love to sit
talking with about the stage. One was a scholar and a writer of note; a
pleasant old gentleman, with the fresh cheek of an octogenarian Cupid.
The other not less noted in his way, deep in local lore, large-brained,
full-blooded, of somewhat perturbing and tumultuous presence. It was
good to hear them talk of George Frederic Cooke, of Kean, and the lesser
stars of those earlier constellations. Better still to breakfast with
old Samuel Rogers, as some of my readers have done more than once, and
hear him answer to the question who was the best actor he remembered, "I
think, on the whole, Garrick."

If we did but know how to question these charming old people before
it is too late! About ten years, more or less, after the generation
in advance of our own has all died off, it occurs to us all at once,
"There! I can ask my old friend what he knows of that picture, which
must be a Copley; of that house and its legends about which there is
such a mystery. He (or she) must know all about that." Too late! Too
late!

Still, now and then one saves a reminiscence that means a good deal
by means of a casual question. I asked the first of those two old
New-Yorkers the following question: "Who, on the whole, seemed to you
the most considerable person you ever met?"

Now it must be remembered that this was a man who had lived in a city
that calls itself the metropolis, one who had been a member of the
State and the National Legislature, who had come in contact with men
of letters and men of business, with politicians and members of all the
professions, during a long and distinguished