The next evening they sat in the same place, but the moon was up, and his mood was different, more placid and pensive than before. The swell and plunge of the billows on the beach made solemn accompaniment to the guttural music of his voice. There was a mournfulness in the murmur of his tones as elemental and sad as the tremendous sighing of the sea itself. “This world,” he said, “seems to me a penal abode. We have all lived elsewhere and gone astray, and now we expiate our bygone offences. There is no other explanation that I can think of for the tangled snarl of human fates. True, since we are ignorant of these sins, our punishment seems not just. But then we may some time recover memory of all and so understand everything clearly. It is all mystery now, but if there is any explanation I am convinced we are convicts working out our penances, and hell is not hereafter but here. Just hear those breakers boom, boom, boom. Do they not seem to you to be drumming the funereal Rogue’s March for this Botany Bay of a world?” A stranger to Forrest, merely to gratify his vanity by drawing the attention of a company to his speech, said he had seen the celebrated actor drunk in the gutter. The friend who reported this to Forrest would not reveal who the man was. But one day he pointed him out on the opposite sidewalk. The outraged and angry tragedian went quietly over and accosted the slanderer; “Do you know Edwin Forrest, and do you say you once saw him drunk in the gutter?” On receiving an affirmative reply he broke out in the strong vernacular of which he was a master, “Now, you sneaking scoundrel and lying calumniator, I am Edwin Forrest. I ache all over to give you the damnedest thrashing you ever tasted. But it is against my principles. I should be ashamed of myself if I stooped to take such advantage of your cowardly weakness. But, while I will not do it with my body, in my mind I kick and spit on you. Now pass on, and relish yourself, and be damned, you human skunk.” Although Forrest used much profane language, his real spirit was not an irreverential one. His profanity was but an expletive habit, a safety- valve for wrath. When expostulated with on the custom, he said, “I never knowingly swear before ladies or clergymen, lest it should shock or grieve them. But at other times, when it is necessary either for proper emphasis or as a vent for passion too hot and strong, why I let it rip as it will.” In connection with the Broad Street mansion which he occupied at the time of his death, Forrest built and fitted up a handsome private theatre. John Wiser, a scenic artist, arranged and painted it. At its completion Forrest seated himself in a large chair, and, after expressing his pleasure at the effect, said, “John, do you know what would be the most delightful sight in the world, eh? If I could only see this room filled with children, and a company of little boys and girls playing on that stage.”