Good heavens! If I was original and strong in the West, why should I wait ten years before venturing into the East?
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOURTH
I recall the Popularity and too Early Death of Edwin Adams.
I hear many tales of the insolence of stars—of their overbearing manners, and their injustice to "little people," as the term goes; but personally I have seen almost nothing of it. In the old days stars were generally patient and courteous in their manners to the supporting companies.
Among the stars whose coming was always hailed with joy was Edwin Adams, he of the golden voice, he who should have prayed with fervor, both day and night: "Oh, God! protect me from my friends!" He was so popular with men, they sought him out, they followed him, and they generally expressed their liking through the medium of food and drink. Like every other sturdy man that's worth his salt, he could stand off an enemy, but he was as weak as water in the hands of a friend, and thus it came about that he often stood in slippery places, and though he fell again and again, yet was he forgiven as often as he sinned, and heartily welcomed back the next season, so great was his power to charm.
He was not handsome, he was not heroic in form, but there was such dash and go, such sincerity and naturalness in all his work, that whether he was love-making or fighting, singing or dying, he convinced you he was the character's self, whether that character was the demented victim of the Bastille, young Rover in "Wild Oats," or that most gallant gentleman Mercutio, in which no greater ever strode than that of Edwin Adams. His buoyancy of spirit, his unconquerable gayety made it seem but natural his passion for jesting should go with him to the very grave. Many a fine Mercutio gives:
"——a plague o' both your houses!"
with a resentful bitterness that implies blame to Romeo for his "taking off," which would be a most cruel legacy of grief and remorse to leave to his young friend—but Adams was that brave Mercutio:
"That gallant spirit that aspired the clouds,
Which too untimely here did scorn the earth."
and whose last quips, coming faintly across paling lips, expressed still good-natured fun, and so: