Beginning a theatrical career nearly sixty years ago (1833), roving up and down the earth ever since, and seldom continuing in one place, Jefferson has had uncommon opportunities of noting the development of the United States and of observing, in both hemispheres, the changeful aspect of one of the most eventful periods in the history of the world. Actors, as a class, know nothing but the stage and see nothing but the pursuit in which they are occupied. Whoever has lived much among them knows that fact, from personal observation. Whoever has read the various and numerous memoirs that have from time to time been published by elderly members of that profession must have been amused to perceive that, while they conventionally agree that "all the world's a stage," they are enthusiastically convinced that the stage is all the world. Jefferson's book, although it contains much about the theatre, shows him to be an exception in this respect, even as he is in many others. He has seen many countries and many kinds of men and things, and he has long looked upon life with the thoughtful gaze of a philosopher as well as the wise smile of a humourist. He can, if he likes, talk of something besides the shop. His account of his life "lacks form a little," and his indifference to "accurate statistics"--which he declares to be "somewhat tedious"--is now and then felt to be an embarrassment. One would like to know, for instance, while reading about the primitive theatrical times, when actors sailed the western rivers in flatboats, and shot beasts and birds on the bank, precisely the extent and limits of that period. Nor is this the only queer aspect of the dramatic past that might be illumined. The total environment of a man's life is almost equally important with the life itself--being, indeed, the scenery amid which the action passes--and a good method for the writing of a biography is that which sharply defines the successive periods of childhood, youth, manhood, and age, and, while depicting the development of the individual from point to point, depicts also the entire field through which he moves, and the mutations, affecting his life, that occur in the historic and social fabric around him. Jefferson, while he has painted vigorously and often happily, on a large canvas, has left many spaces empty and others but thinly filled. The reader who accompanies him may, nevertheless, with a little care, piece out the story so as to perceive it as a sequent, distinct, harmonious, and rounded narrative. Meanwhile the companionship of this heedless historian is delightful--for whether as actor, painter, or writer, Jefferson steadily exerts the charm of a genial personality. You are as one walking along a country road, on a golden autumn day, with a kind, merry companion, who knows all about the trees that fringe your track and the birds that flit through their branches, and who beguiles the way with many a humorous tale and many a