audience in sympathy cried, "Take him off! take him off!" and he was
carried away to die. Poor Edmund Kean! When Schiller, the famous
comedian, was tormented with toothache, some one offered to draw the
tooth. "No," said he, "but on the 10th of June, when the house closes,
you may draw the tooth, for then I shall have nothing to eat with it."
The impersonation of character is often the means of destroying health.
Molière, the comedian, acted the sick man until it proved fatal to him.
Madame Clarion accounts for her premature old age by the fact that she
had been obliged so often on the stage to enact the griefs and
distresses of others. Mr. Bond threw so much earnestness into the
tragedy of "Zarah," that he fainted and died. The life of the actor and
actress is wearing and full of privation and annoyance, as is any life
that depends upon the whims of the public for success.

One of the events in Church matters, towards the close of this year, was
a pastoral letter of the Episcopal Bishops against Church fairs. So many
churches were holding fairs then, they were a recognised social
attribute of the Church family. This letter aroused the question as to
whether it was right or wrong to have Church fairs, and the newspapers
became very fretful about it. I defended the Church fairs, because I
felt that if they were conducted on Christian principles they were the
means of an universal sociality and spiritual strength. So far as I had
been acquainted with them, they had made the Church purer, better. Some
fairs may end in a fight; they are badly managed, perhaps. A Church
fair, officered by Christian women, held within Christian hours,
conducted on Christian plans, I approved, the pastoral letter of the
Episcopal Bishops notwithstanding.

Just when we were in the midst of this religious tempest of small
finances, the will of Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt came up in the