His mother was the loveliest old aristocrat with a taking drawl, a drawl that was high-bred and patrician, not rustic and plebeian, which her famous son inherited. All the women of that ilk were gentlewomen. The literary and artistic instinct which attained its fruition in him had percolated through the veins of a long line of silent singers, of poets and painters, unborn to the world of expression till he arrived upon the scene. These joint cousins of ours embraced an exceedingly large, varied and picturesque assortment. Their idiosyncrasies were a constant source of amusement to us. Just after the successful production of his play, The Gilded Age, and the uproarious hit of the comedian, Raymond, in the leading role, I received a letter from him in which he told me he had made in Colonel Mulberry Sellers a close study of one of these kinsmen and thought he had drawn him to the life. "But for the love o' God," he said, "don't whisper it, for he would never understand or forgive me, if he did not thrash me on sight." The pathos of the part, and not its comic aspects, had most impressed him. He designed and wrote it for Edwin Booth. From the first and always he was disgusted by the Raymond portrayal. Except for its popularity and money-making, he would have withdrawn it from the stage as, in a fit of pique, Raymond himself did while it was still packing the theaters. The original Sellers had partly brought him up and had been very good to him. A second Don Quixote in appearance and not unlike the knight of La Mancha in character, it would have been safe for nobody to laugh at James Lampton, or by the slightest intimation, look or gesture to treat him with inconsideration, or any proposal of his, however preposterous, with levity. He once came to visit me upon a public occasion and during a function. I knew that I must introduce him, and with all possible ceremony, to my colleagues. He was very queer; tall and peaked, wearing a black, swallow-tailed suit, shiny with age, and a silk hat, bound with black crepe to conceal its rustiness, not to indicate a recent death; but his linen as spotless as new-fallen snow. I had my fears. Happily the company, quite dazed by the apparition, proved decorous to solemnity, and the kind old gentleman, pleased with himself and proud of his "distinguished young kinsman," went away highly gratified.