Each turns night
into day. I have known rather intimately all the eminent English-speaking
actors of my time from Henry Irving and Charles Wyndham to Edwin Booth and
Joseph Jefferson, from Charlotte Cushman to Helena Modjeska. No people are
quite so interesting as stage people.
During nearly fifty years my life and the life of Joseph Jefferson ran
close upon parallel lines. He was eleven years my senior; but after
the desultory acquaintance of a man and a boy we came together under
circumstances which obliterated the disparity of age and established
between us a lasting bond of affection. His wife, Margaret, had died, and
he was passing through Washington with the little brood of children she had
left him.
It made the saddest spectacle I had ever seen. As I recall it after more
than sixty years, the scene of silent grief, of unutterable helplessness,
has still a haunting power over me, the oldest lad not eight years of age,
the youngest a girl baby in arms, the young father aghast before the sudden
tragedy which had come upon him. There must have been something in my
sympathy which drew him toward me, for on his return a few months later
he sought me out and we fell into the easy intercourse of established
relations.
I was recovering from an illness, and every day he would come and read by
my bedside. I had not then lost the action of one of my hands, putting an
end to a course of musical study I had hoped to develop into a career.
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