which bring a fortune in a day, but by hard personal labor, he gave away over a quarter of a million dollars, and then was stigmatized as an avaricious curmudgeon. Cherishing the keenest pride in his profession and in those who were its honor and ornament,--bestowing greater pecuniary benefactions on it than any other man who ever lived, and meditating a nobler moral service to it than any other mere member of it has conferred since Thespis first set up his cart,--he was accused of valuing his art only as a means of personal enrichment and glorification, and of being a haughty despiser of his theatrical brothers and sisters. As a result of these industrious misrepresentations, there is abroad in a large portion of the community a judgment of him which singularly inverts every fair estimate of his deserts after a complete survey. It seems due to justice that the facts be stated, and his character vindicated, so far as the simple light of the realities of the case will vindicate it. Two definite illustrations may here fitly serve to show that the foregoing statements are to be regarded not as vague generalities, but as strict and literal truth. One is in relation to the frequent estimate of Forrest as a quarrelsome, fighting man. Against this may be set the simple fact that, with all his gigantic strength, pugilistic skill, and volcanic irritability, from his eighteenth year to his death he never laid violent hand in anger on a human being, except in one instance, and that was when provocation had set him beside himself. The other illustration is concerning his alleged pecuniary meanness. When he was past sixty-five, alone in the world with his fast-swelling fortune, under just the circumstances to give avarice its sharpest edge and energy, he set apart the sum of fifty thousand dollars for an annuity to an old friend, to release him from toil and make his last years happy. Even of those called generous, how many in our day are capable of such a deed in answer to a silent claim of friendship?