As, for instance, when I wished to tell whom I had seen taking away a certain book, I said: "It was Mr.—er—er, oh, you know, Mr.—er, why this man," and I pulled in my head like a turtle and hitched up my shoulders to my ears, and the anxious owner cried: "Oh, Thompson has it, has he?" Thompson having, so far as we could see, no neck at all—my pantomime suggested his name.
Everyone can recall the enormous brow of Mr. Barrett, and how beneath his great, burning eyes his cheeks hollowed suddenly in, thinning down to his sensitive mouth. I was on the stage in New Orleans, the first morning of my engagement there (I was under Mr. Daly's management, but he had loaned me for a fortnight), and I started out with: "Mr. Daly said to please ask Mr.——," away went the name—goodness gracious, should I forget my own name next!
The stage manager suggested: "Mr. Rogers."
"No, oh, no! I mean Mr.—er—er," and I trailed off helplessly.
"Mr. Seymour?" offered a lady.
"No, no! that's not it!" I cried; "why, goodness mercy me! you all know whom I mean—the—the actor with the hungry eyes?"
"Oh, Barrett!" they shouted, all save one voice, that with a mighty laugh cried out: "That's my brother Larry, God bless him! no one could miss that description, for sure he looks as hungry to-day as ever he did when he felt hungry to his heart's core!"
And so it was that I first met poor Joe Barrett, who worshipped the brother whose sore torment he was. For this great, broad-shouldered, ruddy-faced fellow with the boyish laugh had ever in his veins the craving for liquor—that awful inherited appetite that can nullify prayer and break down the most fixed determination.
"Ah!" he cried to me, "no one, no one can ever know how good Larry has been to me, for while he is fighting and struggling to rise, every little while some lapse of mine drags him back a bit. Yet he never casts me off—never disowns me. He has had to discharge me for the sake of discipline here, but he has re-engaged me. He has sent me away, but he has taken me back again. I promise, and fail to keep my promise. I fall, and he picks me up. Through the cursed papers I have dragged my brother through the mud, but the sweet Saviour could hardly forgive me more fully than Larry does, for, look you, he never forgets that I am the son of my father, who was accursed before me, while he is the son of our poor mother—blessed be her name! It isn't that I don't try. I keep straight until the agony of longing begins to turn into a mad desire to do bodily harm to someone—anyone, and then, fearing worse, I drink my fill, and the papers find me out, and are not content to tell of the disgraceful condition of Joseph Barrett, but must add, always, 'the brother of the prominent actor, Mr. Lawrence Barrett.' Poor Larry! poor little delicate chap that he used to be, with his big, brainy head—too heavy for his weak neck and frail body to carry."
And then he told me of their sorrowful life, their poverty. The often-idle father and his dislike for the delicate boy, whose only moment of happiness was when the weary mother, the poor supper over, sat for a little to breathe and rest, and held his heavy head upon her loving breast, while Joe sang his songs or told all the happenings of the day.