Irving looked thoughtful for a moment or two, which is a long period of silence for an eloquent man. Then he asked:
“My boy, why do you do it?”
Members of the Dramatists’ Club (New York) still recall with delight a story he once told them and which promised a brilliant climax that they could distinctly foresee. The end was quite as effective as they had imagined, yet it was entirely different and consisted of but two words.
Irving can turn even his peculiarities to account in story-telling. Like any other man of affairs he had sudden and long periods of absent-mindedness—which means that his mind is for the time being not only not absent but on the contrary is entirely present and working at the rate of an hour a minute. One day while we were driving together he turned to me and said:
“Marshall, I have a story you can add to your repertoire—a very quaint one.” Then he went into deep thought and we had gone fully a block before he spoke again; then he said:
“And you know——”
Then we went another block, then farther, but suddenly he asked:
“Now wasn’t that droll?” It certainly was, no matter what it was, if he said so, but he still owes me the story, for he had told it only to himself.
Such details of Irving’s thoughtfulness—almost fatherly solicitude, for other members of his profession, as have become generally known are but a small fraction of what might be told had not the beneficiaries been begged to hold their tongues. But here is one that was made public by my friend, E. S. Willard, an English actor already referred to and very popular in America. To realize its significance, one must imagine himself an American manager with an appreciative eye for Lyceum successes. At a dinner given at Delmonico’s by Willard to Irving, Mr. Willard said: