Gilded Age, and the uproarious hit of the comedian, Raymond, in the leading
role, I received a letter from him in which he told me he had made in
Colonel Mulberry Sellers a close study of one of these kinsmen and thought
he had drawn him to the life. "But for the love o' God," he said, "don't
whisper it, for he would never understand or forgive me, if he did not
thrash me on sight."

The pathos of the part, and not its comic aspects, had most impressed him.
He designed and wrote it for Edwin Booth. From the first and always he
was disgusted by the Raymond portrayal. Except for its popularity and
money-making, he would have withdrawn it from the stage as, in a fit of
pique, Raymond himself did while it was still packing the theaters.

The original Sellers had partly brought him up and had been very good to
him. A second Don Quixote in appearance and not unlike the knight of La
Mancha in character, it would have been safe for nobody to laugh at James
Lampton, or by the slightest intimation, look or gesture to treat him with
inconsideration, or any proposal of his, however preposterous, with levity.

He once came to visit me upon a public occasion and during a function.
I knew that I must introduce him, and with all possible ceremony, to
my colleagues. He was very queer; tall and peaked, wearing a black,
swallow-tailed suit, shiny with age, and a silk hat, bound with black crepe
to conceal its rustiness, not to indicate a recent death; but his linen as
spotless as new-fallen snow. I had my fears. Happily the company, quite
dazed by the apparition, proved decorous to solemnity, and the kind old
gentleman, pleased with himself and proud of his "distinguished young
kinsman," went away highly gratified.

Not long after this one of his daughters--pretty girls they were, too, and