r convictions, but do not share
them."

"That is fair," he said. "I cannot ask anything more. I am obliged to
you for coming to see me. My intention was to purchase a place in the
burial-ground, and have them put into a coffin and carried in a hearse.
I might do it without any one's knowing that it was not a human body.
Would you assist me, then?"

"But if no one _knew_ it," I said, "how would it be a public testimony
against the destruction of life?"

"True, it would not. Well, I will consider what to do. Perhaps I may
wish to bury them privately in some garden."

"In that case," said I, "I will find you a place in the grounds of some
of my friends."

He thanked me, and I took my leave,--exceedingly astonished and amused
by the incident, but also interested in the earnestness of conviction of
the man.

I heard, in a day or two, that he had actually purchased a lot in the
cemetery, two or three miles below the city, that he had had a coffin
made, hired a hearse and carriage, and had gone through all the
solemnity of a regular funeral. For several days he continued to visit
the grave of his little friends, and mourned over them with a grief
which did not seem at all theatrical.

Meantime he acted every night at the theatre, and my friends told me
that his acting was of unsurpassed excellence. A vein of insanity began,
however, to mingle in his conduct. His fellow-actors were afraid of
him. He looked terribly in earnest on the stage; and when he went behind
the scenes, he spoke to no one, but sat still, looking sternly at the
ground. During the day he walked about town, giving apples to the
horses, and talked to the drivers, urging them to treat their animals
with kindness.

An incident happened, one day, which illustrated still further his
sympathy for the humbler races of animals. One of the sudden freshets
which come to the Ohio, caused commonly by heavy rains melting the snow
in the valleys of its tributary streams, had raised the river to an
unusual height. The yellow torrent rushed along its channel, bearing
on its surface logs, boards, and the _debris_ of fences, shanties, and
lumber-yards. A steamboat, forced by the rapid current against the stone
landing, had been stove, and lay a wreck on the bottom, with the water
rising rapidly around it. A horse had been left, fastened on the boat,
and it looked as if he would be drowned. Booth was on the landing, and
he took from his pocket twenty dollars, and off