“‘’Twas the embodying of a lovely thought, A living picture exquisitely wrought With hues we think, but never hope to see In all their beautiful reality, With something more than fancy can create, So full of life, so warm, so passionate. Young beauty, sweetly didst thou paint the deep Intense affection woman’s heart will keep More tenderly than life! I see thee now, With thy white-wreathed arms, thy pensive brow, Standing so lovely in thy sorrowing. I’ve sometimes read, and closed the page divine, Dreaming what that Italian girl might be, Yet ne’er imagined look or tone more sweet than thine.’” An actor named James Fennell, endowed with a superb figure and a noble elocution, and a great favorite with play-goers in the boyhood of Forrest, made an indelible impression on him. The finished actor, however, was an unhappy man, thriftless in his affairs, and an inveterate drunkard. When he had become an old man his intemperance grew so gross, and his indebtedness to his landlady was so great, that she would keep him no longer. Driven away, he roamed about for some time in despair. Finally, on a bitter winter’s night, amidst a pelting snow- storm, he came back and knocked at the door. The landlady opened the window and looked out. Fennell, a picture of woebegone wretchedness, struck an attitude and recited the lines,— “Pity the sorrows of a poor old man, Whose trembling limbs have borne him to your door; His days are dwindled to the shortest span: Oh, give relief, and heaven will bless your store;—” with such powerful pathos that the heart of the woman relented, and she took him in and cared for him till, a little later, he died. The piteous case of this actor, whose infirmity destroyed the fruits of his genius, taught the youthful Forrest a lesson which he never forgot. Instead of looking to artificial stimulants to prop up forces flagging under the strain of the irregular exertions and late hours of a player, he learned to depend on a sufficient supply of plain, wholesome food, carefully and slowly taken, and a scrupulous observance of full hours of sleep. Had they followed this wise course, how many—like the brilliant and wayward Kean, whose conduct disgraced the profession his genius glorified, and poor Mrs. George Barrett, whose beauty of person and motion intoxicated the beholder—would have been kept from their untimely and unhonored graves!