No other profession is so beset by the temptations and trials of this odious spirit as the histrionic, which lives directly in the public gaze, feeding on popular favor. And among all the actors America has produced, no other had so varied, so intense and immense an experience of the results of it as Forrest. He wrote these sad and caustic words in his old age: “For more than forty years the usual weapons of abuse, ridicule, and calumny have been unceasingly levelled at me, personally and professionally, by envious associates, by ungrateful friends turned traitors, by the hirelings of the press, and by a crowd of causeless enemies made such by sheer malignity.” In a speech made twenty-two years previously in the Walnut Street Theatre, in response to a call before the curtain, he had said, “I thank you with all my heart for this glorious and generous reception. In the midst of my trials it is gratifying to be thus sustained. I have been assailed, ladies and gentlemen, by a fiendish combination of enemies, who, not content with striking at my professional efforts, have let loose their calumnies upon my private character and invaded the sacred precincts of my home. Apart from the support of my ardent and cherished friends is the consciousness that I possess a reputation far dearer than all the professional honors that the world could bestow,—a reputation which is dearer to me than life itself. I will therefore pursue unawed the even tenor of my way. I will, with God’s blessing, live down the calumnies that would destroy me with my countrymen; and, turning neither to the right hand nor to the left hand, will fearlessly toil to preserve to the last the reputation of an honest and independent American citizen.”