It is not surprising that prison locks kept such a man from his duties in the playhouse; but the public always welcomed the prodigal on his return. When he reappeared at Covent Garden, as Sir Pertinax, in March 1808, after a long confinement, it was to "the greatest money-house, one excepted, ever known at that theatre. Never was a performer received in a more flattering or gratifying manner." [Illustration: (George F. Cooke)] But he slipped back into bad habits, was often forgetful of his parts, and was sometimes speechless; yet he was generally able to keep up the Scottish dialect, if he could speak at all, and his part require it. Once, when playing Sir Archy Macsarcasm, he forgot his name, called himself _Sir Pertinax Macsycophant_, and was corrected by a purist in the gallery. Cooke looked up, and happily enough remarked, "_Eet's aw ane blude_!" He was hardly less happy, when, for some offence given by him, on the stage, at Liverpool, he was called on to offer an apology to the audience. Liverpool merchants had much fattened, then, by a fortunate pushing of the trade in human flesh. "Apology! from George Frederick Cooke!" he cried; "take it from this remark: There's not a brick in your infernal town which is not cemented by the blood of a slave!" The American Cooper found him in the lowest of the slums of Liverpool, and tempted, or kidnapped him to America, whence this compound of genius and blackguard never returned. On one of his early appearances, in New York, he is said, being elated, to have refused to act till the orchestra had played "God Save the King;" and then he insisted, with tipsy gravity, that the audience should be "upstanding." In seventeen nights following the 21st of November 1810, when he first appeared in New York, as Richard, the treasury was the richer by twenty-one thousand five hundred and seventy-eight dollars. He felt and expressed, however, such a contempt for the Yankee character, that New York soon deserted him, and Philadelphia paid him little or no homage. Once he was informed that Mr. Madison was coming from Washington, expressly to see him in a favourite character. "Then, if he does, I'll be ---- if I play before him. What, I, George Frederick Cooke, who have acted before the Majesty of Britain, play before your Yankee President! No! I'll go forward to the audience, and I'll say, Ladies and gentlemen,-- "The King of the Yankee-doodles has come to see me act; _me_, George Frederick Cooke, who have stood before my royal master, George III., and received his imperial approbation ... it is degradation enough to play before rebels; but I'll not go on for the amusement of a king of rebels, the contemptible King of the Yankee-doodles!" From among the "Yankee-doodles" Cooke found, however, a lady with the old dramatic name of Behn, who became his second wife; but his condition was little improved thereby. Dr. Francis, in his _Old New York_, gives the following picture of him at this time:--