I BELIEVE in the medicine of mirth, and in what I might call the longevity of laughter. Every man who has caused real, true, honest mirth, has been a benefactor of the human race. In a world like this, where there is so much trouble--a world gotten up on such a poor plan--where sometimes one is almost inclined to think that the Deity, if there be one, played a practical joke--to find, I say, in such a world, something that for the moment allows laughter to triumph over sorrow, is a great piece of good fortune. I like the stage, not only because General Sherman likes it--and I do not think I was ever at the theatre in my life but I saw him--I not only like it because General Washington liked it, but because the greatest man that ever touched this grain of sand and tear we call the world, wrote for the stage, and poured out a very Mississippi of philosophy and pathos and humor, and everything calculated to raise and ennoble mankind. I like to see the stage honored, because actors are the ministers, the apostles, of the greatest man who ever lived, and because they put flesh upon and blood and passion within the greatest characters that the greatest man drew. This is the reason I like the stage. It makes us human. A rascal never gained applause on the stage. A hypocrite never commanded admiration, not even when he was acting a clergyman--except for the naturalness of the acting. No one has ever yet seen any play in which, in his heart, he did not applaud honesty, heroism, sincerity, fidelity, courage, and self-denial. Never. No man ever heard a great play who did not get up a better, wiser, and more humane man; and no man ever went to the theatre and heard Robson and Crane, who did not go home better-natured, and treat his family that night a little better than on a night when he had not heard these actors. I enjoy the stage; I always did enjoy it. I love the humanity of it. I hate solemnity; it is the brother of stupidity--always. You never knew a solemn man who was not stupid, and you never will. There never was a man of true genius who had not the simplicity of a child, and over whose lips had not rippled the river of laughter--never, and there never will be. I like, I say, the stage for its wit and for its humor. I do not like sarcasm; I do not like mean humor. There is as much difference between humor and malicious wit as there is between a bee's honey and a bee's sting, and the reason I like Robson and Crane is that they have the honey without the sting.