A citizen who was standing by Drake asked him if he could explain these strange words. He said he could not. Forrest immediately gave, with great rapidity of utterance, an elegant and lucid exposition of the classical superstitions on which the passage is based. He did it with such grace and force that the whole company broke into applause. He turned to Drake with a low bow and said, “My dear sir, I owe this to you. Do you remember the lesson you taught me at Louisville, fifteen years ago, about Bellona and her bridegroom? Allow me now to thank you.” As he took him by the hand the tears were rolling down the cheeks both of the old man and of the young man. Forrest ever remembered with gratitude the kindness shown him by Mr. Jones, one of the managers under whom he made his first journey to the West and served his practical apprenticeship on the stage. And when the player had become a mature man, crowned with prosperity, living in his great mansion on Broad Street, in Philadelphia, and the manager was destitute and forsaken, bowed by misfortune and old age, he gave his early benefactor a home, taking him into his own house, treating him with kind consideration, comforting his last days, and following his dust to the grave with affectionate respect. The relations of Forrest with the ladies who acted principal parts with him were almost uniformly of the most satisfactory character, marked by the greatest courtesy, justice, and delicacy. There were two or three instances of strong dislike on both sides. But in all the other examples, from his first assistants, Mrs. Riddle and Miss Placide, to his latest protégées, Miss Kellogg and Miss Lillie, there was nothing but the highest esteem and the most cordial good-will between the parties, their kind sentiments towards him ever sincere, his grateful recollections of them unalloyed. To that estimable woman and gifted actress, Mrs. Riddle, he especially felt himself indebted. In a letter to his biographer he says of her, “To her most kind and unselfish friendship, her motherly care, her wise counsels, the valuable instructions her artistic genius and experience enabled her to give me during two of the most critical years of my young life, I owe more of acknowledgment and affection than I can easily express or ever forget.”