Wherever he has gone he has reached the popular heart.

Here in the United States he has quickened the pulse beats of four generations.

With the cradle songs of America the name of Stephen Collins Foster “is immortal bound,” and I would no more dishonor his memory than that of Robert Burns or the author of The Star-Spangled Banner.

His mind was of that order which is prone to believe what it wants to believe.

He leaped at conclusions, and from his premise his conclusion was usually sound.

In point of fact I have an impression that, barring Jackson and Polk, most of those who have got there were loath to give it up.

One sentence especially caught the newspaper risibilities of the time, and it was many a year before the phrase “between the sherry and the champagne” ceased to pursue me.

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.

He had his beliefs and stood by them; but he was never aggressive.

Before his audience he must be master of himself, holding the situation and his art by the firmest grip.

Joseph Jefferson came to his artistic spurs slowly but surely, being nearly thirty years of age when he got his chance, and therefore wholly equal to it and prepared for it.

He was a master of his craft as well as a leader in society and letters.

To look at him when he came upon the stage was to laugh; yet he commanded tears almost as readily as laughter.

People were growing restive under ministrations which were at times little less than impositions upon their forbearance.

They wanted something if possible as strong, but more refined, and in the person of the leading comedy man of Laura Keene’s company, a young actor by the name of Jefferson, they got it.

New York had never witnessed, never divined anything in pathos and humor so exquisite.

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.

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…

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.

His purpose was to fill the scene and forget himself.

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.

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

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!

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.

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