hose of the
Roman Emperors, before his nose was broken in a quarrel, and his
deportment on the stage was imperially grand. He had a farm in
Maryland, and at one time he undertook to supply a Washington hotel
with eggs, milk, and chickens, but he soon gave it up. His instant
and tremendous concentration of passion in his delineations
overwhelmed his audience and wrought it into such enthusiasm that
it partook of the fever of inspiration surging through his own
veins. He was not lacking in the power to comprehend and portray
with marvelous and exquisite delicacy the subtle shades of character
that Shakespeare loved to paint, and his impersonations were a
delight to the refined scholar as well as the uncultivated backwoodsmen
who crowded to his performances.

The Washington Theatre was not well patronized, but the strolling
proprietors of minor amusements reaped rich harvests of small silver
coins. The circus paid its annual visit, to the joy of the rural
Congressmen and the negroes, who congregated around its sawdust
ring, applauding each successive act of horsemanship and laughing
at the repetition of the clown's old jokes; a daring rope-dancer,
named Herr Cline, performed his wonderful feats on the tight rope
and on the slack wire; Finn gave annual exhibitions of fancy glass-
blowing; and every one went to see "the living skeleton," a tall,
emaciated young fellow named Calvin Edson, compared with whom
Shakespeare's starved apothecary was fleshy.

General Jackson turned a deaf ear to the numerous applications made
to him for charity. At one time when he was President a large
number of Irish immigrants were at work on the Chesapeake and Ohio
Canal in Georgetown, and, the weather being very hot, many of them
were prostrated by sunstroke and bilious diseases. They were
without medical aid, the necessities of life, or any shelter except
the shanties in which they were crowded. Their deplorable condition
led to the formation of a society of Irish-Americans, with the
venerable Mr. McLeod, a noted instructor, as president. A committee
from this Society waited on the President for aid, and Mr. McLeod
made known the object of their visit. General Jackson interrupted
him by saying that he "entirely disapproved of the Society; that
the fact of its existence would induce these fellows to come one
hundred miles to get the benefit of it; that if the treasury of
the United States were at his disposal it could not meet the d