These men and these women, naturally enough, were fascinating to the adolescent actor, whose faculties were all aglow with ambition to excel, whose curiosity was on edge in every direction to know the contents of the living world which it was his profession to portray, and whose passions were just breaking from their fullest bud. Nor was he any less fascinating to them. His bluff courage, his young formative docility and eagerness, his smiling openness of face and bearing, so sadly changed in later years, and the nameless badge of personal distinction and original force he bore on his front and in his accent, drew the men to make much of him. So the outlines of his slender but sinewy and breathing form with the muscles so superbly defined, the deep and mellow tones of his ringing voice in which the clang-tints of the whole organism were audible, his large and dark-brown eyes so clearly set and brilliant, his fresh blood teeming over him in vital revelation at each vehement mood, and the speaking truthfulness of his portrayals of thought and sentiment in character, magnetized the women, secured him many a flattering smile and note and flower, and led to no slight experience in amours, which put their permanent stamp upon his inner being, and often rose out of the vistas of memory in pictures when he shut his eyes and mused in his lonely old age. A biography of Forrest which omitted these things would be like a description of the Saint Lawrence without an allusion to Niagara. In his opening manhood, before repeated experiences of injustice, slander, and treachery had in any degree soured and closed his soul, Forrest had a heart as much formed for friendship as for love. He was full of ingenuous life, sportive, affectionate, every way most companionable. His friendships were fervent and faithfully cherished. The disappointments, the revulsions of feeling, and the results on his final character, we shall see in the later stages of this biography.