Once when he was filling an engagement in Boston, Oakes told him a story of a humble mechanic whose landlord had compelled him to pay a debt twice over, under circumstances of cruelty which had brought out proofs of a most heroic honesty and refined sensibility in the poor man. Forrest listened to the narrative with rapt attention. At its close he exclaimed, “That landlord is a stony-hearted brute, and this mechanic is a man of a royal soul! I must go and see him and his family before I leave Boston.” Thanksgiving Day came that week. A friend of Oakes had sent him for his Thanksgiving dinner an enormous wild turkey, weighing with the feathers on twenty-seven and a half pounds. He showed this to Forrest on Wednesday and told him they were to feast on it the next day. “No, old chap,” replied Forrest; “you and I will dine on a beefsteak, and take the wild turkey to the noble fellow who paid Shylock his money twice.” Immediately after breakfast on Thanksgiving Day a barouche was ordered, the big black turkey, looking nearly as large as a Newfoundland dog, placed on the front seat, and Forrest and Oakes took the back seat. They drove to the theatre. Forrest accosted the box-keeper: “Mr. Fenno, I want for to-night’s performance six of the best seats in the house, for an emperor and his family who are to honor me by their presence.” Fenno gave him the tickets and declined to take pay for them. He insisted on paying for them, saying, “They are my guests, sir.” They then rode over to East Boston to the house of the honest man, found him, announced their names, explained the cause and object of their visit, and were invited in by him and introduced to his wife and four children. Forrest kissed each one of the children. He brought in the huge turkey and laid it on the table. Then, turning to the wife, he said, “We have brought a turkey for your Thanksgiving dinner; and if you and your noble husband and children enjoy as much in eating it as my friend and myself do in offering it you will be very happy. And I am sure you deserve great happiness, and I have faith that God will give it to you all.” He then presented the tickets for the play of Metamora, saying, “I shall look to see if you are all in the seats before I begin to act.” Not one of them had ever been inside of a theatre. The sensations that were awaiting them may be imagined. When the curtain rose and Metamora appeared on the stage amidst that tumultuous applause which in those times never failed to greet his entrance, he walked deliberately to the front, fixed his eyes on the little family, bowed, and then proceeded. Throughout the play he acted for and at that group, who seemed far happier than any titular royalty could have been. Though this happened twenty years before his death, he never forgot when in Boston to inquire after the _American emperor_! The honest man is still living, and should this little story ever meet his eye he will vouch for its entire truth.