In fact, I confess I should be afraid of that man or woman who was not affected by this personation. It has been my good or bad luck, as the case may be, for many years past to have written on every actor and actress who have come to this city, and to have witnessed thousands of dramatic performances. Constant dropping of water wears away the rock, and I confess until I saw Mr. Jefferson, I have looked upon stage murders and all sorts of villainies with a large degree of composure; have even smiled at the lachrymose Mrs. Haller, beloved of young women, and have studied with all my might to discover the fun in the stage situation at which the audience was laughing; and instances are on record where I have slept the sleep of the just all through a five-act tragedy, overrunning with murders, suicides, rapes, burglaries, divorces and _crim. con._ enough to have started a second Boston in business. And when I first went to see Mr. Jefferson, I went all calloused with dramatic labor. But if that man didn't have me laughing and crying alternately the whole evening, then I'm a sinner. The entire personation is so complete and individualized that it is very difficult to select any particular scene as better than others, for Mr. Jefferson is so thorough an artist that he neglects not even the smallest detail. But there are two or three scenes which seem to me to stand out more prominently than the rest. One in particular is the episode where he is ordered to leave the house of his wife. Most actors would have torn a passion to tatters at this point, ranted and rushed round the stage, delivered mock heroics and dashed off in an ecstasy of blue fire with their arms flourished in the air, utterly forgetful of unities or proprieties. How different, Jefferson! He is sitting upon a chair, partially turned from the audience, in a maudlin state. His wife orders him to leave her house and never return. Perhaps she has ordered him that way before, for he pays little heed to it. She repeats the order in a louder tone of voice, but still he pays no heed to it. He has stretched out his arm and raised his head as if to speak, when she again issues her order in an unmistakable manner. It strikes him like a thunder-bolt. Without changing the position of a limb, he sits as if that instant petrified. He is dumb with amazement, as the terrible truth gradually becomes clear in his muddled brains. The silence, the motionlessness, the fixed look of the face, are literally terrible. And when he rises slowly, quietly tells the wife he shall never return--for he has been driven away--stoops and kisses the little one, and so easily passes from the doorstep to the outer darkness, that it might have been the flitting of a shadow, you inevitably draw a breath of relief that the scene is over, and indulge in a genuine feeling of the most hearty sympathy for this good-for-nothing, lazy, drunken, good-hearted vagabond.