With fluttering doubts if all be well or ill,
With love for many and with tears for some;
All feelings which o'erleap the years long lost,
And bring our hearts back to the starting-post."
He took passage in the Poland, and, with no notable adventure on the voyage, arrived at New York on the 5th of August, 1836, to be received with cheers into the open arms of a crowd of his friends as he stepped ashore, prouder than ever of his birthright of American citizenship.
CHAPTER XI.
PROFESSIONAL TOUR IN GREAT BRITAIN.
Two weeks of rest in his Philadelphia home, in delightful reunion with his mother and sisters, and two weeks more devoted to the banquets and parties with which his rejoicing friends there and in New York celebrated his return, passed quickly. He had now to prepare to say good-bye again. For overtures of such a flattering character had been made to him while in England to return and give a series of performances in the principal British theatres, that he had accepted them, and was engaged to be there early in October. The desire, however, after his long absence, to see him on the stage was so general, and was urged so eagerly, that he determined to appear for a few nights. Accordingly, he played the parts of Damon, Othello, and Spartacus for five nights in the Chestnut Street Theatre, in Philadelphia, and the same parts, with the addition of Lear, in the Park Theatre, in New York. The crowd and the excitement on the opening night were almost unprecedented, all the passages to the house being blocked with applicants two hours before the rising of the curtain. At the first glimpse of the actor in his stately senatorial garb, the multitude that filled the entire auditorium with a packed mass of faces rose as by one impulse and hailed him with deafening applause, kept up until it seemed as if it was not to end. He had never played better, by general consent, than he did this night. And when the play closed, and the enthusiastic ovation which had saluted his entrance was repeated, he certainly had every reason to feel in truth what he expressed in words: