ide popularity. Florence wrote some plays and a
number of sprightly songs, which his wife sang inimitably. He himself
improved steadily in his acting, and, especially in the gentle humor and
melting pathos with which he clothed his characters, stood quite alone.
A tour through England added to his fame, and his songs were soon being
sung and whistled in the streets pretty generally wherever the English
tongue was spoken. One song in particular, called "Bobbing Around," had
immense popularity.

But Florence was more than a mere song-writer Irish comedian. In his
later years he proved himself to be an actor of high attainments and no
one who ever witnessed a performance of "The Rivals," with Jefferson as
Bob Acres, and Florence as Sir Lucius O'Trigger, will ever forget his
finished and glowing impersonation.

When Edwin Forrest, heart-broken and discredited, died in 1872, he left
his manuscript plays to another great tragedian, whom he regarded as his
legitimate successor, John McCullough. In some respects McCullough was a
greater actor than Forrest, for he possessed that quality of poetic
insight and high imagination which Forrest lacked, while in physical
equipment for the great characters of tragedy he was in no whit his
inferior.

John McCullough was born in Coleraine, Ireland, in 1837, his parents,
who were small farmers, bringing him to this country at the age of
sixteen. They settled at Philadelphia and the boy was apprenticed to a
chair-maker, but he soon broke away from that hum-drum employment, and
in 1855, appeared in a minor part in "The Belle's Strategem." His story,
after that, was the usual one of long years of training in various stock
companies. He gradually worked his way into prominence, and finally in
1866, became associated with Edwin Forrest, taking the second parts in
the latter's plays; and, after Forrest's death, taking his place as the
first impersonator of robust tragedy in America.

For ten years his success was tremendous--then came the sad ending.
McCullough had always been supremely great in characters requiring the
delineation of madness--Virginius, King Lear, Othello. Whether this had
anything to do with the final tragedy cannot be said, but in 1884, while
playing at Chicago, he broke down in the midst of a performance, and had
to be led from the stage. His mind was gone; he never rallied, and ended
his days in an asylum for the insane.

One of the most successful engagements McCullou