was but fourteen--his handsome face and manly bearing, and, above
all, that wonderful and resonant voice, won the audience at once, and
his career was begun.

But many hardships awaited him. The theatres of New York and
Philadelphia had their companies of well-known and well-trained actors.
There was no hope for him in either of those cities; but at last he
secured an engagement to play juvenile parts at Pittsburgh, Cincinnati,
Lexington, and other towns of the middle west, at a salary of eight
dollars a week. This, of course, was scarcely enough to keep body and
soul together, but all Forrest wanted was a chance, and he did not
murmur at the suffering and hardship which followed.

For business was poor, and Forrest did not always receive even that
eight dollars. The end came at Dayton, Ohio, where the company went to
pieces. Forrest, without money and almost without clothes, walked the
forty miles to Cincinnati, where, after a time, he found another
position. Such was the beginning of his career, and this hard novitiate
lasted for four years, until, in 1826, at the age of twenty, he was able
to return to New York and secure an engagement at the old Bowery
Theatre. He was an instant success, and from year to year his wonderful
powers seemed to increase, until he became easily the most famous actor
of the day.

But his fame was soon to be dulled by unfortunate personalities.
Conceiving a jealousy of Macready, the famous English actor, he hissed
him at a performance in Edinburgh, and when Macready came to America in
1849, Forrest's followers broke in upon a performance at the Astor Place
opera house, and a riot followed in which twenty-two men were killed. A
quarrel with his wife led to the divorce court, and the suit was decided
against him.

The end was pathetic. He had been troubled with gout for a long time,
and in 1865, it took a malignant turn, paralyzing the sciatic nerve, so
that he lost the use of one hand, and could not walk steadily. His power
had left him, and in the five years that followed, he played to empty
houses and an indifferent public, not content to retire, but hoping
against hope that he might in some way regain his lost prestige. A
stroke of paralysis finally ended the hopeless struggle.

Forrest's art was of a cruder and more robust sort than Edwin Booth's
who, by the way, was named after him. He was greatest in characters
demanding a great physique, a commanding presence and--yes, let us say