Ample reply to these brutal inquiries is afforded by the rapt silence, the copious tears, and the all-shaking plaudits of the unprecedented crowds, drawn for so long a series of years in every part of the country by the magnetic impersonations which have secured him the first illustrious place in the history of his country’s stage. But two or three individual anecdotes possess interest enough to warrant their preservation here. While he was enacting the part of Iago to the Othello of Edmund Kean in Albany one night, a stalwart canal-boatman was seated in the pit, so near the stage that he rested his elbow on it close to the footlights. Iago, in the scene where he had wrought so fearfully on the jealousy of the Moor, crossed the stage near the boatman, and, as he passed, the man looked savagely at him and hissed through his teeth while grinding them together, “You damned lying scoundrel, I would like to get hold of you after this show is over and wring your infernal neck!” When they met in the dressing-room, Kean generously said to Forrest, “Young man, if my acting to-night had received as high a compliment as that brawny fellow in the pit bestowed on yours I should feel very proud. You made the mimic show real to him, and I will tell you your acting merited the criticism.” Mr. Rees recalls among his interesting reminiscences an incident of which he was a witness in New Orleans. Forrest was delivering the curse in Lear with his wonted fierce and overwhelming vehemence. Mr. Rees heard a strange sound proceeding from some one beside him, and, turning, found, to his alarm, an elderly gentleman with his eyes fixed, his mouth open, and a deathly paleness overspreading his face. Seizing him by the shoulders and giving him a sudden jerk, he caused a reaction of the blood. The gentleman gasped, heaved a deep sigh, and gazed around like one awaking from a troubled sleep. The awful curse so awfully uttered, which had taken away his breath, seemed still ringing in his ears. “One moment more and I should have been a dead man,” he said. And, looking towards the vacant stage, he asked, “Is that terrible old man gone?”