Chapter the Twenty-Third

The Actor and the Journalist--The Newspaper and the State--Joseph
Jefferson--His Personal and Artistic Career--Modest Character and
Religious Belief



I


The journalist and the player have some things in common. Each turns night
into day. I have known rather intimately all the eminent English-speaking
actors of my time from Henry Irving and Charles Wyndham to Edwin Booth and
Joseph Jefferson, from Charlotte Cushman to Helena Modjeska. No people are
quite so interesting as stage people.

During nearly fifty years my life and the life of Joseph Jefferson ran
close upon parallel lines. He was eleven years my senior; but after
the desultory acquaintance of a man and a boy we came together under
circumstances which obliterated the disparity of age and established
between us a lasting bond of affection. His wife, Margaret, had died, and
he was passing through Washington with the little brood of children she had
left him.

It made the saddest spectacle I had ever seen. As I recall it after more