One of the most amusing stories told me by Mr. Booth was about a skull, which, by the way, is one of the relics of The Players to-day. A woman in St. Louis wrote to Booth’s father and told him she was the widow of a friend of his who was hanged for murder. She asked permission to send the skull to the actor, suggesting that he use it in “Hamlet”—“Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio!” Booth’s father respectfully but disgustedly declined. But the woman was not to be so easily put off. Young Edwin Booth happened to be in St. Louis years later, when he received a letter from the same woman, offering to the son the present the father had refused. The property skull happened to be in pretty bad condition at that time, and as he had no sentiment about it, he replied that he should like to own it. Then Booth said: “I was in bed one morning when a little nigger boy called to see me. He had a covered basket on his arm. I was curious to see what it contained, so asked him to open it up. Placing the basket on the table, he removed the top and a napkin which was underneath. Before I knew it, basket, cover, napkin flew up in the air, and the most frightened nigger you ever saw was flying down the passageway, while on the floor lay a skull.” Skied at the top of the staircase and as much out of sight as possible is a horrible portrait, larger than life size, of a well-known actress which was once presented to The Players by some of her relatives. Booth told me that on one Ladies’ Day he suddenly saw these same relatives coming up the stairs. “I was between them and the portrait,” he said, “and I succeeded in keeping them from seeing it. Never in my life have I attempted to hold an audience as I tried to hold them. I am certain that they saw nothing but Edwin Booth until I had turned them around and backed them down the stairway again.” In connecting me with the Forbes-Robertson family Mr. Booth’s thoughts would often wander to painting and he once told me how Sargent did the portrait which hangs in the club. As I remember, he sat for it in several places until one day Sargent asked him to have a look at it and say what he thought. Booth was loath to give an opinion, saying it was not to be his, anyway, and he was not the one to be suited. But Sargent pressed him until he said, “No, to be frank, I do not think it is a characteristic expression of mine.” “Are you very tired?” asked the painter. “No.” “Then again, if you will.” “That time,” said Booth, “I did get tired. He must have kept me standing an hour. What did he do? Why, he began by scraping out the entire head, then rubbed in some blackish stuff and painted that,” pointing to the portrait. Sargent must have done that wonderful head _premier coup_ in less than an hour!