About this time two significant entries are found in his diary. The first one is: "Received intelligence of the death of Edwin Forrest Goodman, the infant son of a friend.
'All his innocent thoughts
Like rose-leaves scattered.'"
The second is this: "And so Jane Placide is dead. The theatrical people of New Orleans then have lost much. She imparted a grace and a force and dignity to her rôle which few actresses have been able so admirably to combine. She excelled in a profession in the arduous sphere of which even to succeed requires uncommon gifts, both mental and physical. Her disposition was as lovely as her person. Heaven lodge and rest her fair soul!"
The reader will recollect Miss Placide as the friend about whom young Forrest quarrelled with Caldwell and withdrew from his service. How strangely the millions of influences or spirits that weave our fate fly to and fro with the threads of the weft and woof! While he was writing the above words in the capital of France, her remains were sleeping in a quiet cemetery of the far South, on the other side of the world, with the inscription on the slab above her,—
"There's not an hour
Of day or dreamy night but I am with thee;
There's not a wind but whispers o'er thy name,
And not a flower that sleeps beneath the moon
But in its hues of fragrance tells a tale