d benefits
To laughter and contempt!'

"A third of a century ago, I made the acquaintance of John McCullough,
then at the very zenith of his fame. In even measure as was the
elder Booth Richard the Third, Forrest, King Lear, or Edwin Booth,
Hamlet, so was McCullough the born Macbeth. When I first saw
him emerge with dishevelled hair and bloody hands from the apartment
of the murdered king, I was, I confess, in mortal dread of the
darkness. I have heard another since of even greater repute in
that masterful impersonation, but with me to the last, John McCullough
will remain the veritable Macbeth. His are the words that linger:

'I go, and it is done; the bell invites me,
Hear it not, Duncan; for it is the knell
That summons thee to heaven or to hell.'

"Edwin Booth has stepped from the stage of living men, and when in
the tide of time will such a Hamlet again appear? To him Nature
had been prodigal of her choicest blessings. Every gift the
gods could bestow to the full equipment of the interpreter, the
actor, the master, was his.

'He was a man, take him for all in all,
We shall not look upon his like again.'

Many moons will wax and wane before from other lips, as from
his, will fall:

'Or that the Everlasting had not fixed
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter.'

or, giving expression to thoughts from the very depths, which have
in all the ages held back from such dread ending:

'To die, to sleep;
To sleep! perchance to dream; aye, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause.'

"The ever-abiding memory that his brother was the real actor in
a tragic scene that gave pause to the world, burdened the heart
and mellowed the tone of Edwin Booth, and no doubt linked him in
closer touch with what has, as by the enchanter's wand, been
portrayed of the 'melancholy Dane.'

"Two years before the assassination of President Lincoln I heard
Wilkes Booth as Romeo at the old McVicker. The passing years have
not wholly dimmed his

'Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day
Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain-tops,'

and then, as if forecasting a scene to strike horror even in 'States
unborn and in accents yet unknown,' the exclamation:

'I must be gone and live,
Or stay and die!'

"High on the list of the world's benefactors write the name of Joe
Jefferson, as one who loved his fellow-men.