TOR'S AIM--PRAISE OF NOTABLE ACTORS
--BARRETT, FORREST, McCULLOUGH, EDWIN BOOTH, WILKES BOOTH, JEFFERSON,
IRVING--MACBETH'S PRAISE OF SLEEP.

On the evening of October 27, 1908, a meeting was held in the Grand
Opera House, Chicago, Illinois, in the interest of the Democratic
candidates in the campaign then pending. The meeting began a few
minutes after midnight, and the immense audience consisted, in a
large measure, of actors and actresses and their attendants from
the various theatres of the city.

After an eloquent political speech of the Hon. Samuel Alschuler
and a stirring recitation by one of the actors, I was introduced, and
spoke as follows:

"I am grateful for the opportunity under such happy auspices, to
bid you _good-morning._ I would count myself fortunate, indeed,
could I contribute even the smallest mite to the enjoyment of those
who have in such unstinted measure dispensed pleasure to so many
of the human family, to the representatives of a profession which,
struggling up through the centuries, has at last found honored and
abiding place in a broader civilization, a calling whose sublime
mission it is to give surcease to harassing care, to smooth out
the wrinkles from the brow, bring gladness to the eye, to teach that

'Behind the clouds is the sun still smiling';

in a word, to add to the sum of human happiness.

"It has been my good fortune, in the happy years gone by, to have had
the personal acquaintance of some of the most eminent of your
profession. Under the witchery of this inspiring presence, 'the
graves of memory render up their dead.' Again I hear from the lips
of Barrett: 'Take away the sword; States can be saved without it!'
'How love, like death, levels all ranks, and lays the shepherd's
crook beside the sceptre!'

"Who that ever saw Forrest 'sitting as if in judgment upon kings' could
forget that superb presence? In the silent watches, even yet,
steal upon us in ominous accents the words, 'Put out the light,
and then put out the light!' Complimented upon the manner in which
he played Lear, he angrily exclaimed: 'Played Lear, played Lear?
I _play_ Hamlet, I _play_ Macbeth, I _play_ Othello; but I _am_
Lear!' Possibly the art of the tragedian has known no loftier
triumph than in Forrest's rendition of Lear's curse upon the
unnatural daughter:

'Let it stamp wrinkles in her brow of youth;
With cadent tears fret channels in her cheeks;
Turn all her mother's pains an