During these delightful reveries it came up before me that in acting
Asa Trenchard I had, for the first time in my life on the stage,
spoken a pathetic speech; and though I did not look at the audience
during the time I was acting--for that is dreadful--I felt that they
both laughed and cried. I had before this often made my audience
smile, but never until now had I moved them to tears. This to me
novel accomplishment was delightful, and in casting about for a new
character my mind was ever dwelling on reproducing an effect where
humour would be so closely allied to pathos that smiles and tears
should mingle with each other. Where could I get one? There had been
many written, and as I looked back into the dramatic history of the
past a long line of lovely ghosts loomed up before me, passing as in a
procession: Job Thornberry, Bob Tyke, Frank Ostland, Zekiel Homespun,
and a host of departed heroes "with martial stalk went by my watch."
Charming fellows all, but not for me, I felt I could not do them
justice. Besides, they were too human. I was looking for a
myth--something intangible and impossible. But he would not come.
Time went on, and still with no result,

During the summer of 1859 I arranged to board with my family at a
queer old Dutch farmhouse in Paradise Valley, at the foot of Pocono
Mountain, in Pennsylvania. A ridge of hills covered with tall
hemlocks surrounds the vale, and numerous trout-streams wind through
the meadows and tumble over the rocks. Stray farms are scattered
through the valley, and the few old Dutchmen and their families who
till the soil were born upon it; there and only there they have ever
lived. The valley harmonised with me and our resources. The scene
was wild, the air was fresh, and the board was cheap. What could the
light heart and purse of a poor actor ask for more than this?