the performance made. During the last two or three years of
his life his health failed gradually, and he was finally compelled to
leave the stage. On April 19, 1893, he suffered a stroke of paralysis
from which he never rallied, lingering in a semi-conscious state until
June 7th, when he sank rapidly and died.

Of his art no words can give an adequate idea. It was essentially
poetic, full of a strange and compelling charm. His great moments laid
upon his audience the spell of his genius, and rank with the highest
achievements of any actor who ever lived. His countenance--

"That face which no man ever saw
And from his memory banished quite,
The eyes in which are Hamlet's awe
And Cardinal Richelieu's subtle light"--

as Thomas Bailey Aldrich wrote of Sargent's portrait, which heads this
chapter--was a strange and moving one, and in range of expression
unsurpassed. His eyes were especially wonderful, dark brown, but seeming
to turn black in moments of passion, and conveying, with electrical
effect, the actor's thought. He was unique. He stood apart. The American
stage has never produced another like him.

Second only to Edwin Booth in sheer glory of achievement stands Edwin
Forrest. He fell far below Booth in grace, in charm, and in poetic
insight, but he surpassed him in physical equipment for the great parts
of tragedy, particularly in his voice, magnificent, vibrating, with an
extraordinary depth and purity of tone.

Unlike Booth, Forrest came from no family of actors, nor inherited a
name famous in the annals of the stage. He was born in Philadelphia in
1806, his father being a Scotchman, employed in Stephen Girard's bank,
and making just enough money to keep his family of six children from
actual want. He died when Edwin was thirteen years old, and his widow,
by opening a little store, managed to support the children. She was a
serious and devout woman and decided that Edwin should enter the
ministry. But meantime, he must earn a living, so he was apprenticed to
a cooper.

How long he stayed with the cooper nobody knows; but it could not have
been long, for already he was fired with an ambition to be an actor, and
after some experience as an amateur, astonished and grieved his mother
by announcing that he was going on the stage. He made his first
appearance on the 27th of November, 1820, as Young Norval, in Home's
tragedy of "Douglas," and was an immediate success. His youth--remember,
he