I had had the pleasure of making Madame Modjeska's acquaintance two years ago, during my first visit to the United States, and it was a great pleasure to be able to renew it after the lecture. I will go and see her _Ophelia_ to-morrow night. * * * * * _January 27._ Spent the whole morning wandering about Boston, and visiting a few interesting places. Beacon Street, the public gardens, and Commonwealth Avenue are among the finest thoroughfares I know. What enormous wealth is contained in those miles of huge mansions! The more I see Boston, the more it strikes me as a great English city. It has a character of its own, as no other American city has, excepting perhaps Washington and Philadelphia. The solidity of the buildings, the parks, the quietness of the women's dresses, the absence of the twang in most of the voices, all remind you of England. After lunch I called on Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes. The "Autocrat of the Breakfast Table" is now over eighty, but he is as young as ever, and will die with a kind smile on his face and a merry twinkle in his eyes. I know no more delightful talker than this delightful man. You may say of him that every time he talks he says something. When he asked me what it was I had found most interesting in America, I wished I could have answered: "Why, my dear doctor, to see and to hear such a man as you, to be sure!" But the doctor is so simple, so unaffected, that I felt an answer of that kind, though perfectly sincere, would not have been one calculated to please him. The articles "Over the Tea Cups," which he writes every month for the _Atlantic Monthly_, and which will soon appear in book form, are as bright, witty, humorous, and philosophic as anything he ever wrote. Long may he live to delight his native land! * * * * * In the evening I went to see Mr. Edwin Booth and Madame Modjeska in "Hamlet." By far the two greatest tragedians of America in Shakespeare's greatest tragedy. I expected great things. I had seen Mounet-Sully in the part, Henry Irving, Wilson Barrett; and I remembered the witty French _quatrain_, published on the occasion of Mounet-Sully attempting the part: Sans Fechter ni Rivière Le cas était hasardeux; Jamais, non jamais sur terre, On n'a fait d'Hamlet sans eux. I had seen Mr. Booth three times before. As _Brutus_, I thought he was excellent. As _Richelieu_ he was certainly magnificent; as _Iago_ ideally superb. His _Hamlet_ was a revelation to me. After seeing the raving _Hamlet_ of Mounet-Sully, the somber _Hamlet_ of Irving, and the dreamy _Hamlet_ of Wilson Barrett, I saw this evening _Hamlet_ the philosopher, the rhetorician. Mr. Booth is too old to play _Hamlet_ as he does, that is to say, without any attempt at making-up. He puts on a black wig, and that is all, absolutely all. It is, however, a most remarkable, subtle piece of acting in his hands.