A selection of three of the better among these pieces will suffice to satisfy curiosity; and it is to be feared that after perusing them the judgment of the reader will accord with that of Moses Y. Scott.

TO ——.

TO MISS S—— ON HER LEAVING TOWN.

The third piece was composed on occasion of the military funeral of Henry K. Bunting, an intimate friend of Forrest, a young man of most estimable character, whose early death was lamented by the whole community:

In March the celebrated and ill-starred Conway filled an engagement in New Orleans. The witnessing of his performances formed one of the epochs in the development of Forrest's dramatic power. He played Malcolm to the Macbeth of the tall and over-impassioned tragedian, and caught some valuable suggestions from his idiomatic individuality and style. But it was the Othello of this powerful and unhappy actor which most impressed him. He played this part with a sweetness and a majestic and frenzied energy which no audience could resist. The whole truth of the course of the ambition, love, jealousy, madness, vengeance, desperation, remorse, and death of the noble but barbaric Moor was painted in volcanic and statuesque outlines. Nothing escaped the apt pupil, who with lynx-eyed observation fastened on every original point, every electric stroke, and at this adolescent period drank in the significance of the fully-developed passions of unbridled human nature. It was not long after these mimic presentments when the real passions in the darkly-tangled plot of his own existence wrought so convulsively on poor Conway, the friction sunk so profoundly into the sockets and vital seats of his being, that he went mad, threw himself overboard, and all his griefs and fears at once in the deep bosom of the ocean buried.

Early in May, Forrest's benefit was announced, and he was underlined for Lear, "the first time in New Orleans." On account of bad weather the benefit was postponed, and, when it did occur, instead of Lear he performed Octavian, in Coleman's Mountaineers. The season closed with the end of the month, when he played Carwin, the leading rôle in the drama of Therese, by John Howard Payne.

The first actress in the company of the American Theatre at New Orleans for the season of 1825 was Miss Jane Placide. She was born at Charleston, and was then, in her twentieth year, deservedly a great favorite with the Southern public. She was extremely beautiful in her person, sweet in her disposition, piquant in her manners, and artistically natural in her rôles. Among the many private suppliants for her smiles rumor included both Caldwell and Forrest. Where the tinder of such rivalry is lying about, flashes of jealousy, easily provoked, may at any time elicit an explosion of wrath. So it happened here, and the two men had a sharp quarrel. The young actor challenged the calmer manager. He refused to accept it, saying their altercation was an inconsiderate effervescence which had better be forgotten by them both. But the temper of Forrest, aggravated by his hot associates and the local code, was not so cheaply to be assuaged. He had the following card printed and affixed in several conspicuous places: "Whereas James H. Caldwell has wronged and insulted me, and refused me the satisfaction of a gentleman, I hereby denounce him as a scoundrel and post him as a coward. Edwin Forrest."

Caldwell, so far from being enraged at this sonorous manifesto, laughed at it, quietly adding, "Like the Parthian, he wounds me as he flies." For in the afternoon of the very day of his issuing the ominous placard, Forrest had accepted an invitation from his friend Push-ma-ta-ha to spend a month with him in the wigwams and hunting-grounds of his tribe; and already, side by side, on horseback, each with a little pack at his saddle, they were scampering away towards the tents of the Choctaws, a hundred miles distant. Three reasons urged him to this interesting adventure. First, he loved his friend, the young Indian chief, and longed to see him in his glory at the head of his people. Secondly, he was poor, and there it would cost him nothing for food and lodgings. And thirdly, he desired to make a personal study of Indian character, life, and manners.

The red men treated him, as the friend and guest of their chief, with marked distinction, making him quickly feel himself at home. He adapted himself to their habits, dressed in their costume, and, as far as he could, took part in all their doings, their smokes, their dances, their hunts, their songs. Their rude customs were not offensive but rather attractive to him, and he was happy, feeling that it would not be hard for him to relapse from civilization and stay permanently with these wild stepchildren of nature. He seemed to come into contact with the unwritten traditions of the prehistoric time, and to taste the simple freedom that prevailed before so many artificial luxuries, toils, and laws had made such slaves of us all. The fine chance here offered him of getting an accurate knowledge of the American Indian, alike in his exterior and his interior personality, he carefully improved, and when he came to enact the part of Metamora it stood him in good stead.

One night Push-ma-ta-ha and Forrest were lying on the ground before a big fire which they had kindled a little way out from the village. They had been conversing for hours, recalling stories and legends for their mutual entertainment. The shadows of the wood lay here and there like so many dark ghosts of trees prostrate and intangible on the earth. The pale smoke from their burning heap of brush floated towards heaven in spectral volumes and slowly faded out afar. In the unapproachable blue over their heads hung the full moon, and in the pauses of their talk nothing but the lonely notes of a night-bird broke the silence. Like an artist, or like an antique Greek, Forrest had a keen delight in the naked form of man, feeling that the best image of God we have is nude humanity in its perfection, which our fashionable dresses so travesty and degrade. Push-ma-ta-ha, then twenty-four years old, brought up from his birth in the open air and in almost incessant action of sport and command, was from head to foot a faultless model of a human being. Forrest asked him to strip himself and walk to and fro before him between the moonlight and the firelight, that he might feast his eyes and his soul on so complete a physical type of what man should be. The young chief, without a word, cast aside his Choctaw garb and stepped forth with dainty tread, a living statue of Apollo in glowing bronze. "Push-ma-ta-ha," said Forrest, in wondering admiration, "who were your grandparents?" His nostrils curled with a superbly beautiful disdain, and, stretching forth his arm with a lofty grace which the proudest Roman orator could not have surpassed, he replied, "My father was never born. The Great Spirit shivered an oak with one of his thunderbolts, and my father came out, a perfect man, with his bow and arrows in his hand!"

Whether this was superstitious inspiration or theatrical brag on the part of the Indian, certainly the scene was a weird and wonderful one, and the speech extremely poetic. Forrest used in after-years to say, "My God, what a contrast he was to some fashionable men I have since seen, half made up of false teeth, false hair, padding, gloves, and spectacles!"

But a sense of duty, in a few weeks, urged the actor to be seeking an engagement for the next season, and, saying good-by forever to his aboriginal comrades, he returned to New Orleans and took passage in a small coasting-vessel for Philadelphia, where he arrived with a single notable adventure by the way. For on the third day out they were becalmed; and, suffering from the excessive heat, he thought to refresh himself by a swim. With a joyous shout and splash he sprang from the taffrail, and swam several times around the sloop, when, chancing to look down and a little way behind, he saw a huge shark making towards him. Three or four swift and tremendous strokes brought him within reach of the anchor-chain, and he convulsively swung himself on deck, and lay there panting with exhaustion. But the ruling passion was strong even then. He immediately went over and over in consciousness, in order to fix them in memory for future use in his art, the frightful emotions he had felt while chased by this white-tusked devil of the ocean!