"O God! that one might read the book of Fate, And see the revolution of the times Make mountains level, and the continent, Weary of solid firmness, melt itself Into the sea! and, other times, to see The beachy girdle of the ocean Too wide for Neptune's hips; how chances mock, And changes fill the cup of alteration With divers liquors! O, if this were seen, The happiest youth--viewing his progress through, What perils past, what crosses to ensue-- Would shut the book, and sit him down and die." Edwin felt melancholy enough as he laid the volume on his knee, and his head sank on his bosom in painful musing. After a long time, breaking from his reverie, he looked up. There stood, erect before him, a stout grape-vine. Apparently its tendrils had been torn from the oak by whose side it grew, and finding itself cast off, alone, deprived of its sustaining protection, it had rallied upon its own roots, spread and deepened them, and now held itself bravely up in solitary independence, as if it were not a vine but a tree. The moral lesson electrified him. He took new heart, with the feeling that it would be shameful for him to succumb when even a poor plant could thus conquer. Twenty years afterwards, with a grateful memory of the incident, he bought that whole woodland region, of some sixty acres, and named it Forrest Hill. He owned it at the day of his death. After another brief trial of the theatre at Lexington, late in the autumn, Collins and Jones grew discouraged, gave up their business, and released Forrest from his contract with them. James H. Caldwell, an extremely good light comedian, and for many years proprietor and manager of the theatre in New Orleans, wrote to him opportunely, offering him an engagement for the ensuing season at a salary of eighteen dollars a week. It is said that Caldwell was led to make this proposition from his remembrance of having once seen the youth make an original point of great power in the part of Richard the Third. It was in the tent scene. All previous actors had been wont to awake from the dream in a state of extreme affright, and either sit on the side of the couch or stand near it. Forrest sprang from his reclining posture, rushed forward to the foot-lights, and there fell upon his knees, with his whole frame trembling, his face blanched with terror, his sword grasped by the hilt in one hand and with the point in the floor, the sword itself so shaking that it could be heard all over the house. The intense realism with which this was done made it sensational in an extraordinary degree.