Genest, in his exceedingly valuable “Account” of the Theatre in Great Britain,--a work to which every later writer on the subject finds himself more or less indebted and which ought to be reprinted,--sagely remarks that “In giving an account of the Stage a good story may sometimes be admitted on slender authority, but where mere matters of fact are concerned the history of the Stage ought to be written with the same accuracy as the history of England.” The attainment of accuracy, however, exacts scrupulous attention, ceaseless vigilance, patient inquiry, and hard work, and only a few writers about the Stage have ever taken the trouble to be thorough and exact. I had expected that Belasco’s “Story” could be depended upon in every particular and that it would prove of invaluable aid in writing this Memoir. I do not doubt that he designed it to be literally true, but, as a conscientious biographer, I am compelled to mention its errors of fact, and I deem it my duty to specify and correct some of them, as an act of justice alike to him and to his, and my, readers. Belasco, as I have ascertained and stated, was born not in 1858 or 1859, as various accounts of him have declared, but in 1853. He has himself affirmed that in 1865, in San Francisco, he walked in a funeral procession expressive of the public grief for the death of Abraham Lincoln and at that time wrote a play, on the tragic and pathetic fate of that illustrious American, expositive of his views of the motives of Lincoln’s murderer. If we were to accredit the dates which are given as authentic in various published sketches of his life,--which appear to have been formally sanctioned,--we should find him to have reached only to the age of five years and nine months when he walked in that procession and wrote that play; we should find him,--according to such wild statements,--when he acted, in Victoria, with Julia Dean and Charles Kean, performing with those distinguished players about three years after both of them had died; we should admire him when, before the age of eleven, he was critically estimating the histrionic style of Walter Montgomery; and when, between the ages of thirteen and fourteen, he was giving counsel, which Raymond the comedian had solicited, relative to the play of “The Gilded Age,” and also as acting as amanuensis to Dion Boucicault. He states that Lawrence Barrett loved John McCullough “like his son.” Barrett, born in 1838, was six years younger than McCullough, born in 1832, and he could not have viewed that stalwart comrade with anything like a paternal--or a filial--feeling. In fact, though they dwelt in amicable association as managers and actors (it would have been hard for anybody to dwell in association with McCullough in any other way), there was no special affection between them, as I personally know. Belasco’s statement that McCullough was at one time Forrest’s dresser is incorrect. He admired Forrest and he