Henry Watterson

But in fighting he was “a dandy.” The goody-goody philosophy of the namby-pamby takes an extreme and unreal view of life.

On the whole I have not known many men more unfortunate than John Throckmorton, who, but for “Old Hell’s Delight,” would have encountered little obstacle to the pursuit of prosperity and happiness.

What possible good can it do you?” She looked me straight in the eye and slowly replied: “Because I love him.

He first entertained and then cultivated the thirst for office, which proved the undoing of Greeley and Raymond, and it proved his undoing.

Both as a newspaper writer and creator and manager, he stood upon the front line, rating with Bennett and Greeley and Raymond.

Thus “personal journalism” cannot be escaped, and whether the “one-man power” emanates from the Counting Room or the Editorial Room, as they are called, it must be clear and answerable, responsive to the common weal, and, above all…

The modern newspaper, as we know it, may be fairly said to have been the invention of James Gordon Bennett, the elder.

Mark Twain’s is his own—American through and through to the bone.

All women—especially all good and discerning women who knew him and who could intuitively read beneath that clumsy personality his fine sense of respect—even of adoration—loved Tom Ochiltree.

Under an unpromising exterior—a stocky build and fiery red head—there glowed a brave, generous and tender spirit.

Cleveland was shocked and outraged, and I made haste to stigmatize it as a lie out of whole cloth.

Never have I passed five hours in a theater so filled with thrills.

And I did; I declared—the reporters were long since gone—that there had not been a man killed amiss in Kentucky since the war; that where one had been killed two should have been; and, amid roars of laughter which gave me time to frame…

Yet he was hard to convince—tenacious of his opinions—courteous but insistent in debate.

There was need of liberalizing and loosening things in Missouri, for which he sat in the Senate—they could not go on forever half the best elements in the State disfranchised.

Though an alien, and always an alien, he possessed none of the shifty traits of the soldier of fortune.

There was nothing either erratic or conceited about Schurz, nor was he more pragmatic than is common to the possessor of positive opinions along with the power to make their expression effectual.

The actor dies and leaves no copy; his deeds are writ in water, only his name survives upon tradition’s tongue, and yet, from Betterton and Garrick to Irving, from Macklin and Quin to Wyndham and Jefferson, how few!

More than King can no man be—Whether he rule in Cyprus or in Dreams.

The Times spoke of him as “an able if not a great actor.” If Joseph Jefferson was not a great actor I should like some competent person to tell me what actor of our time could be so described.

His purpose was to fill the scene and forget himself.

He was just as attractive off the stage as upon it, because he was as unaffected and real in his personality as he was sincere and conscientious in his public representations, his lovely nature showing through his art in spite of him.

The exact reversal of the Lear suggestion in the last act was an inspiration, his own and not Boucicault’s.

Then like a flash came that wonderful Jeffersonian change of facial expression, and as the white head drops upon the arms stretched before him on the table he says: “Well, she led me a hard life, a hard life, but she was the wife of my…

Even had Burton lived, and had there been no diverting war of sections to drown all else, Jefferson would have come to his growth and taken his place as the first serio-comic actor of his time.