A CAMEO IN VERSE

419

actor around whom you are assembled now, and to whom I pay, as best I can, my humble tribute:

To him whose charm of magic art
Has made ideal beauty live,

To soothe the mind and cheer the heart,
What shall we give?

What can we give to feed his flame

Of joy in these victorious days,
But tender love and true acclaim
And grateful praise?

He came as comes in woodland dell
The earliest violet of the year,
That tells, yet hardly seems to tell,
That spring is here.

Sweet, modest, gentle, simple, true,

His art pursued one clear design,-
By power and pathos to subdue,

And to refine.

He nursed no envy, sought no strife

With worldlings for the world's applause,

But only nobly gave his life

To Beauty's cause.

So year by year his fair renown
An ever-widening circle spread,
Thick sewn with amaranth to crown
His royal head.

Still may he move in that white fame
Genius and Truth alone possess,
And every voice that speaks his name
Speak but to bless!

Full be the tide and free the flow

Of fortune while his years increase,

And over all the sunset glow

Of perfect peace!

IX.

EDWARD HUGH SOTHERN.

1859-19-.

MANY years ago, in the course of a familiar conversation at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, my old friend Edward A. Sothern, that remarkable comedian once famous as Lord Dundreary, spoke to me rather ruefully about his son Edward, then a pupil at an academy in England, and showed me a letter from the youth signifying that either he had been, or was about to be, dismissed from school for neglect of his studies. It was a bright letter, written in a blithe spirit, and it was embellished with a comical pen-and-ink drawing, by the writer, in which appeared an open door, a flight of steps, and a boyish figure, with outstretched arms, plunging forward through the air, from the energetic impulse of a large booted foot and leg thrust forth immediately behind him.

"Kicked out," Sothern said, half smiling, yet gravely, "and I suppose that boy will never do any good." Thirty-four years have passed since the comedian was laid in his grave (1881) in Southampton Cemetery, and that boy, Edward Hugh Sothern, as the result of an artistic career longer, more varied, and more conspicuous than that of his father, is one of the most popular actors on the American Stage, distinguished in comedy and romantic drama and successful in the realm of tragedy,—which his brilliant father attempted in vain.

The elder Sothern was an Englishman, born in Liverpool in 1826, and he began his professional career in his native land, coming to America in 1852, and thereafter, for nearly thirty years, parting his time unequally between America and Europe. The younger Sothern is an American, born at No. 79 Bienville Street, New Orleans, December 6, 1859, and although he has acted abroad, his fame and fortune have been gained on the American Stage, to which he belongs and of which he is a conspicuous ornament. In youth, after leaving school, Sothern