infidelity, Colonel Ingersoll had been filling the land with belated
infidelism.

On the stage of the Academy of Music in Brooklyn he had attacked the
memory of Tom Paine, assaulted the character of Rev. Dr. Prime, one of
my neighbours, the Nestor of religious journalism, and on that same
stage expressed his opinion that God was a great Ghost. This action of
President Hayes kept me smiling for a week--I appreciated the joke among
others.

During this month the American Stage suffered the loss of three
celebrities: Edwin Adams, George L. Fox, and E.L. Davenport. While the
Theatre never interested me, and I never entered one, I cannot criticise
the dead. Four years before in the Tabernacle I preached a sermon
against the Theatre. I saw there these men, sitting in pews in front of
me, and that was the only time. They were taking notes of my discourse,
to which they made public replies on the stage of the Chestnut Street
Theatre, Philadelphia, and on other stages at the close of their
performances. Whatever they may have said of me, I stood uncovered in
the presence of the dead, while the curtain of the great future went up
on them. My sympathy was with the destitute households left behind.
Public benefits relieved this. I would to God clergymen were as liberal
to the families of deceased clergymen as play-actors to the families of
dead play-actors. What a toilsome life, the play-actor's! On the 25th of
March, 1833, Edmund Kean, sick and exhausted, trembled on to the English
stage for the last time, when he acted in the character of Othello. The
audience rose and cheered, and the waving of hats and handkerchiefs was
bewildering, and when he came to the expression, "Farewell! Othello's
occupation's gone!" his chin fell on his breast, and he turned to his
son and said: "O God, I am dying! speak to them Charles," and the