I once visited with him the place where he was born. It was a farmhouse twenty-five or thirty miles from Baltimore. We drove out in a one-horse vehicle, and he was Phaëton. The house was partly furnished but unoccupied, and an old negro in an outbuilding gave us the keys. His father's library remained, and a part of his stage wardrobe, and we spent hours ransacking them both, studying old play-bills, even English ones of his father, examining rare copies of Shakespeare, and trying on trappings of Shylock or Lear. I made him put on a wig and act the parts for a single auditor. He was very complaisant that day, or night rather, for we sat up till late into the morning, and then made beds out of Cæsar's mantle and Macbeth's robes. He picked out three volumes of Shakespeare which he had used in playing, full of his own stage directions written in, and variations of the text, and gave them to me as a memento of the visit, inscribing some lines from one of the sonnets. It was Verplanck's illustrated edition, and some of the plates were marked: "Form this picture." I remember afterward noticing that he made the picture on the stage. Many a night in those days we sat together till morning, for he had the actor's habit of turning night into day. Playing till nearly midnight, and supping still later, the excitement of the stage kept him awake afterward, and he never wanted to go to bed. He was never more animated in thought and look and gesture than after acting. Of course, he rose late, and during an engagement his only leisure hours were one or two in the afternoon; for in those early days he went regularly to rehearsal. That was before the era of long runs, and he played a range of parts in each engagement, changing them nearly every night. He sometimes slept after his early dinner, so as to be refreshed and ready for evening. Then there were the painters and sculptors and photographers, always one or two in every town, who wanted to take him, either in a popular part, or "in his habit as he lived." He never dined out while he was playing, except on Sundays, and a walk or a drive was almost his only exercise or amusement; there was not time for more; he had to reserve himself for the night. For he had to work when other men played; his work was their amusement. It was a life utterly unlike that of other men, and it is not strange that his character was unlike theirs. He was exposed to the temptations of youth, and he had his peculiar faults, but no gross vices, and he did no harm or wrong to man or woman--ever, that I knew. Of how many can this be said?