Edwin Forrest is a grate acter. I thot I saw Otheller before me all the time he was actin &, when the curtin fell, I found my spectacles was still mistened with salt-water, which had run from my eyes while poor Desdemony was dyin. Betsy Jane--Betsy Jane! let us pray that our domestic bliss may never be busted up by a Iago! Edwin Forrest makes money acting out on the stage. He gits five hundred dollars a nite & his board & washin. I wish I had such a Forrest in my Garding! THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH Born in 1836; died in 1908; a literary man in New York in early life; removing to Boston, became editor of _Every Saturday_ in 1870-74; editor of the _Atlantic Monthly_ in 1881-1890; among his works "The Ballad of Babie Bell" published in 1856, "Cloth of Gold" in 1874, "Flower and Thorn" in 1876, "Story of a Bad Boy" in 1870, "Marjorie Daw" in 1873, "Prudence Palfrey" in 1874, "The Queen of Sheba" in 1877, "The Stillwater Tragedy" in 1880, "From Ponkapog to Pesth" in 1883, "The Sister's Tragedy" in 1891. I A SUNRISE IN STILLWATER[57] It is close upon daybreak. The great wall of pines and hemlocks that keep off the east wind from Stillwater stretches black and indeterminate against the sky. At intervals a dull, metallic sound, like the guttural twang of a violin string, rises from the frog-invested swamp skirting the highway. Suddenly the birds stir in their nests over there in the woodland, and break into that wild jargoning chorus with which they herald the advent of a new day. In the apple orchards and among the plum-trees of the few gardens in Stillwater the wrens and the robins and the blue-jays catch up the crystal crescendo, and what a melodious racket they make of it with their fifes and flutes and flageolets! [Footnote 57: From Chapter I of "The Stillwater Tragedy." Copyright, 1880, by Thomas Bailey Aldrich. Published by Houghton, Mifflin Company.] The village lies in a trance like death. Possibly not a soul hears this music, unless it is the watchers at the bedside of Mr. Leonard Tappleton, the richest man in town, who has lain dying these three days, and can not last till sunrise. Or perhaps some mother, drowsily hushing her wakeful baby, pauses a moment and listens vacantly to the birds singing. But who else? The hubbub suddenly ceases--ceases as suddenly as it began--and all is still again in the woodland. But it is not so dark as before. A faint glow of white light is discernible behind the ragged line of the tree tops. The deluge of darkness is receding from the face of the earth, as the mighty waters receded of old.