Miss Forrest

“ I went on, launching myself, "I want you to make my peace with Miss Forrest."
"Forrest!" she echoed blankly.
"Yes, your friend, Miss Forrest," I said.
"Oh, yes," she said quickly. "You mean Miss Forrest," and displayed signs of agitation out of keeping with the circumstances.
"The fact is," I continued manfully, "I have done her a grievous injustice. I thought she was a burglar."
"A burglar!" exclaimed Miss Fuller on a high crescendo, opening her wide eyes wider. "Good gracious! ”

“ Something in the tone of his voice and the unwonted tenderness of his manner kindled a fire in that young heart which many waters could not extinguish, and to Rossie it came with a thrill, half fearful, half ecstatic, that she loved Everard Forrest, not as a sister loves a brother or friend loves friend, but as a true, good woman loves the one who to her is the only man in all the world. ”

“ But at the sound of Forrest's step he turned an alert, close-cropped, gray head and stepped out of the embrasure.
"Mr. Ballin?" said Forrest.
"I am Mr. Ballin." His eyes perused the stranger with astonishing speed and deftness, without seeming to do so.
"It was the toss of a coin that decided me to come," said Forrest. "I have asked your butler to lay a place for me at luncheon."
So much assumption on the part of a stranger has a cheeky look in the printing. Yet Forrest's tone and manner far more resembled those of old friendship and intimacy than impertinence. ”

“ Mayhew?" said Miss Forrest, with heightened color and a confident smile as she took his arm. "It is something to be a queen, if it's only the queen of Bedlam."
And though, rather than create a scene, Mrs. Gordon and her daughters joined the party, and Mrs. Wells and Miss Bruce decided to go, it was noticed then and referred to afterward that Mr. McLean never so much as looked at Miss Forrest or noticed her in any way at the time of this occurrence. It was hardly night before the story had gone all over the garrison, and added to Miss Forrest's growing unpopularity ”

“ Don't you want to come with the girls? He says there are half a dozen young gentlemen down there who are eager to see them——"
"Oh, mamma, do!" implored both girls in a breath.
"Why, I hardly know, Miss Forrest," answered Mrs. Gordon, hesitatingly. "Cannot Mrs. Forrest go?"
"Ruth is never ready to go anywhere," answered Miss Forrest, half laughingly, yet with a certain rueful emphasis. "She is a slave to her babies, and as for Celestine, the nurse, she is no help to her whatever."
"Of course you girls must have a 'matron,'" said Mrs. Gordon. "How long will you be there, Mr. Mayhew?" ”

“ She has taken one of those engouements for Miss Forrester which my girls set up all of a sudden. I cannot think where they learnt it. Not from me: I never took a fancy to anybody in my life. If people have any striking qualities, they are generally bad ones. However, Miss Forrester is less disagreeable than most of her set ”

“ Now, I am Mrs. James Everard Forrest, with a long line of blue-blooded Southern ancestry, to say nothing of the bluer Bigelows of Boston. That’s who I am; so please button my boots and bring me my shawl and fan; it’s high time I was off.”
Agnes obeyed, and buttoned the boots, and put a bit of blacking on the toe where the leather was turning red, and brought the fleecy shawl and wrapped it carefully around her sister, who looked exceedingly graceful and pretty, and bore herself like a princess as she entered the Hall and took one of the most conspicuous seats. ”

“ As an actor, Mr. Forrest is fervent, passionate, and active: there is no child's play in whatever he does; but in the most serious, as in the slightest development of feeling, he puts his whole heart into the matter, and carries us away with him in either the subtlety or the strength of his emotion. With powers evidently enabling him to outroar a whirlwind, he is never extravagant,—he is never of 'Ercles' vein; his passion is always from the heart, and never from the lungs. His last two scenes were splendidly acted, from the strength, the self-abandonment of the performer ”

“ Forrest is the most promising tragedian that has appeared in our days. He has, evidently, rare intellectual endowments; a noble and commanding presence; a countenance full of varying expression; a voice mellow, flexible, and in its undertones exquisitely tender, and a discretion that never fails him. If any one can revive the half-extinct taste for the drama, he is the man. ”

“ Ballin rose.
"I'm not feeling well," he said simply; "when the young people have finished with you, Forrest, you will find me in the Signer's room." He left the table and the room, very pale and shaky, for by this time the full meaning of Forrest's incontestable claim had clarified in his brain. He saw himself as if struck down by sudden poverty—of too long leisure and too advanced Forrest finished as abruptly as he had begun and rose from the piano. But for a few charged moments even the twins were silent. ”

“ From Spain Forrest returned for a flying visit to Paris, where he wrote the following letter to his mother, which may be taken as a specimen of the large number he sent to her during his absence:
"Paris, July 3d, 1835.
"My dear Mother,—Your letter of the 27th of May has this moment reached me. How happy has the perusal of it made me! You write that you have been sick, but that now you are well. How glad I am to hear that you are restored! It is the dearest wish of my heart that health and happiness may always be preserved to you,—to you and to my dear sisters. ”

“ Right glad are we that we have seen this picture of Forrest, for it has an eloquent breath for our common humanity. It has given us a glimpse of his nature which long ago we should have rejoiced to see revealed, but whose richness we dreamed not was there. What a volume is a man's life! The heart's story,—always going on, always deepening the great drama of our being as it progresses to the mortal act,—this story, in a strong inveterate nature, writes in the public bearing and in all the features that falsehood as to his sensibilities which the dreadful pen of pride alone engraves. ”

“ After the wealth and magnificence of the Gold King’s house, it is not to be wondered at if other homes look plainly furnished, and yet Lady Forrest’s, although an old-fashioned house, is most pleasant to visit. The furniture and surroundings are in exquisite taste. The afternoon I called, the artistic drawing-room looking out into the garden of sweet flowers was most restful to the eye. Lady Forrest is most kind and genial, and very much liked by every one. She takes great interest in her husband’s work, and takes many a worry from him by seeing people herself who come to interview him. ”

“ Forrest's personal appearance, one would with difficulty imagine him capable of looking the old man, fourscore and upwards, all the attributes of age and feebleness, the palsied head and tottering walk, are admirably assumed, and are never lost sight of throughout the performance. ”

“ But the roof had fallen in, and between the fragments fern and salal crowded, waist-high from the earth floor.
Forrest had believed that all he needed was to be out-of-doors; to get in touch with the growing timber again; to ride or tramp all day through the great stillness; to have the opportunity to think over and outline, undisturbed, his contemplated work, and he would be himself once more. ”

“ Still further, Forrest has a claim for posthumous justice as one who was wronged in important particulars of his life and misjudged in essential elements of his character. Outraged, as he conceived, in the sanctities of his manhood, he bore the obloquy for years with outward silence, but with an inner resentment that rankled to his very soul. Endowed with a tender and expansive heart, cultivated taste, and a scrupulous sense of justice, shrinking sensitively from any stain on his honor, he was in many circles considered a selfish despot addicted to the most unprincipled practices. ”

“ I have kept quiet long enough; four years of neglect would try the patience of any woman, and if he does not choose to recognize me as his wife I shall compel him to do so. You saw me married; you know I am telling the truth. Speak, Agnes, did you not see me married to Everard Forrest?”
“Yes, I did, may God forgive me,” was Agnes’ meek reply, but still Mrs. Markham could not believe her, and was silent while Josephine went on:
“I do not wish for any scene, or talk, or excitement. I am Everard Forrest’s wife, and I wish only to be known as such. ”

“ Forrest as Spartacus was throughout admirable. His very figure and voice were in his favor, the one being strongly muscular, the other replete with a rough music befitting one who in his youth has dwelt, a free barbarian, among the mountains. He electrified his audience; indeed, we have not heard more enthusiastic bursts of applause shake the walls of an English theatre since Othello expired with poor Kean. The great recommendations of Mr. Forrest as a tragedian we take to be strong passion, and equally strong judgment. In the whirlwind of his emotions he never loses sight of self-control. ”

“ It is not my intention to linger over the incidents of the next two years, or more than glance at the Forrest House, where Rosamond Hastings laughed, and played, and romped, gaining each day health, and strength, and girlish beauty, but retaining always the same straightforward, generous, self-denying, truthful character which made her a favorite with every one. To Everard she was literally a good angel, and never was a son watched more carefully by an anxious mother than she watched and guarded him. ”

“ Forrest had an aversion to society, a passion for individuals, and an intense ambition to excel in his art, which he loved for itself. It was quite natural that the friendship of men so unlike, to say nothing of their great disparity in years, should be streaked with coolnesses and gradually cease. ”

“ Most of us are but as collections of fragments pieced together, so full of strictures and contractions that no vibratory impact or undulation can circulate freely in us. But Forrest had this open and poised unity in such a degree that when at ease he swayed on his centre like a mountain on a pivot, and when volition put rigidity into his muscles the centre was solidaire with the periphery. ”

“ We trust that this young gentleman will find the patronage to which his extraordinary ripeness of faculty and his modest deportment entitle him."
It is certainly interesting to find in this, the first criticism of the first regular appearance of Forrest, in the fifteenth year of his age, a distinct indication of his most prominent characteristics throughout his whole histrionic career, namely, his earnest realism, his noble voice, his accurate elocution, and his steady poise. ”

“ The blame so bitterly and often cast on Forrest in this respect was unjust. The vindictive personal censures which his sometimes absorbed and distant bearing elicited from injured self-love were ignoble. The stock is no doubt often provoked to sneer at the Star; but the action is not beautiful or worthy of deferential attention. If the ordinary members of a profession, instead of looking askance at the extraordinary ones and indulging in detraction, would cultivate admiring sympathy, aspiring intelligence, and nobleness, they would soon bridge the chasm that separates them. ”

“ There was fitness and significance in such a genius as his maturing and pouring itself out under the shade of the Western woods, rising up amid their grandeur clear and simple as a spring, till, fed and strengthened, it leaped forth fresh and thundering as a torrent.
In characterizing Forrest as a tragedian by the epithet American, it is necessary that we should understand what is meant by the word in such a connection. We mean that he was an intense ingrained democrat. Democracy asserts the superiority of man to his accidents. ”

“ The likeness to her sister had never seemed as marked to Forrest as it was then, when he came upon her unexpectedly, by the fallen hemlock, on his way to the mills. Was not this the trail to the headwaters? Had they not paused to choose a way through the windfall?
She did not see him, and he waited, mastered by that brief illusion. And while he watched her face she saw the heights of the Olympics change from rose to burnished brass; every peak and spur flamed a signal to the departing sun. ”

“ Forrest saw the design and inwardly resented it, though he said nothing. He followed the wise course of trying to make the best he could of the part assigned him. He made a careful study of the peculiarities of age, in feature, in gait, in voice. He would often sit in places of public resort and critically watch every old man who came in or went out. Many a time when he had chanced to discover some striking example of power and dignity or of weakness and decrepitude in an old man he would follow him in the street and mentally imitate him, reproducing and fixing what he saw. ”

“ An inferior actor would be tempted to weaken or slur everything else in order to give the higher relief to the great central topic of friendship. It was the rare excellence of Forrest that he gave as patient an attention and as sustained a treatment to the gravity and zealous devotion of the senator, the thoughtful habit of the scholar, the fondness of the husband and father, as he did to the touching affection of the friend, in his portraiture of Damon. ”