n Adams, George L. Fox, and E.L. Davenport. While the
Theatre never interested me, and I never entered one, I cannot criticise
the dead. Four years before in the Tabernacle I preached a sermon
against the Theatre. I saw there these men, sitting in pews in front of
me, and that was the only time. They were taking notes of my discourse,
to which they made public replies on the stage of the Chestnut Street
Theatre, Philadelphia, and on other stages at the close of their
performances. Whatever they may have said of me, I stood uncovered in
the presence of the dead, while the curtain of the great future went up
on them. My sympathy was with the destitute households left behind.
Public benefits relieved this. I would to God clergymen were as liberal
to the families of deceased clergymen as play-actors to the families of
dead play-actors. What a toilsome life, the play-actor's! On the 25th of
March, 1833, Edmund Kean, sick and exhausted, trembled on to the English
stage for the last time, when he acted in the character of Othello. The
audience rose and cheered, and the waving of hats and handkerchiefs was
bewildering, and when he came to the expression, "Farewell! Othello's
occupation's gone!" his chin fell on his breast, and he turned to his
son and said: "O God, I am dying! speak to them Charles," and the
audience in sympathy cried, "Take him off! take him off!" and he was
carried away to die. Poor Edmund Kean! When Schiller, the famous
comedian, was tormented with toothache, some one offered to draw the
tooth. "No," said he, "but on the 10th of June, when the house closes,
you may draw the tooth, for then I shall have nothing to eat with it."
The impersonation of character is often the means of destroying health.
Moliere, the comedian, acted the sick man until it proved fatal to him.
Madame Clarion accounts for her premature old age by the fact that she
had been obliged so often on the stage to enact the griefs and
distresses of others. Mr. Bond threw so much earnestness into the
tragedy of "Zarah," that he fainted and died. The life of the actor and
actress is wearing and full of privation and annoyance, as is any life
that depends upon the whims of the public for success.

One of the events in Church matters, towards the close of this year, was
a pastoral letter of the Episcopal Bishops against Church fairs. So many
churches were holding fairs then, they were a recognised social
attribute of the Church family. This letter