At four o’clock the visitors departed, carrying and leaving delightful impressions.
“Newspapers are not allowed to be noisely hawked in the streets here, I find,” said Irving; “and ticket speculators on the sidewalks are also tabooed. A little newsboy offered me a paper yesterday quite confidentially. By the way, you saw the military band belonging to “The Evening Call.” It is composed of the employés of the newspaper. It looked like a band of French guides. It serenaded Miss Terry at her hotel yesterday, and afterwards serenaded me at mine. I was just getting up. It quite affected me to hear “God save the Queen” played as finely almost as if the and of Her Majesty’s Guards were under my window.[23]
V.
“Irving in Clover,” was the journalistic title of a report of “a notable breakfast given to the English tragedian,” which appeared in the “Philadelphia Press.” “A gathering of distinguished men listen to entertaining words by the famous actor; he is presented with the watch of Edwin Forrest.”
The “Clover Club” is one of the pleasantest of Philadelphian institutions. Its reception to Mr. Irving, and the Forrest incident, which makes the day historical in the annals of the stage, calls for a special record. As I was travelling at this time to another city, I propose to repeat the chronicle of the local journalist, and Mr. Irving’s own personal report of the interesting proceedings. Let me say, then, in the language of the “Press,” that on the morning of December 7 Mr. Irving broke his fast with the club that has a four-leaved Shamrock on which to spread its bounty, à votre santé for its toast cry, and for its motto the quatrain,—
“While we live,
We live in clover;
When we die,
We die all over.”