He kept his word with the boy in the pit, whose pointed remarks and loud laughter had so much annoyed and provoked him. He inflicted the promised thrashing, though—as he said, in relating the incident more than fifty years later—it was one of the toughest jobs he ever undertook. As soon as the combatants were satisfied, the victor and the victim made up, shook hands, and remained ever afterwards firm friends.
A little domestic scene which occurred about this time may fitly be introduced here, as illustrating the character and influence of the mother, and also, as will appear in a subsequent chapter, the assimilating docility of the child. It was a Sunday afternoon, in the summer. The tired and careful mother sat at the open window, the sunshine streaming across the floor, gazing at the passers in the street, and musing, perhaps, on times long gone by. Edwin was turning the leaves of a large pictorial copy of the Bible. A sudden explosion of laughter was heard from him. "What are you laughing at, my boy? It seems unbecoming, with that book in your hands." "Why, mother, I cannot help it; it is so absurd. Here is a picture of the grapes of Eshcol; and the bunches of them are so big and heavy that it takes two men, with a pole across their shoulders, to carry them along! Is it not funny?" "Edwin, come to me," replied the mother, with calm seriousness. Taking his hand in hers, and looking steadily in his eyes, she said, "Do you not think it very presumptuous and conceited in you, so young, so ignorant, knowing only the climate and fruits of Pennsylvania, to set yourself up to pronounce judgment in this way on the artist who most likely had at his service the experience of travellers in all countries? It is more than probable that in those tropical climes where the Bible was written the vines might grow almost into trees, and bear clusters of grapes ten times larger than any you ever saw. Modesty is one of the best traits in a young person. I want you to remember never again to laugh at the fancied ignorance and absurdity of another, when perhaps the ignorance and absurdity are all your own." However often he may have failed to practise the lesson, yet when, fifty-five years afterwards, the old actor related the incident, the beating of his heart, the tenderness of his voice, and the moisture in his eyes, turned reverently towards the portrait of his mother on the wall, showed how profoundly the influence of that hour had sunk into his soul.
When Master Forrest was in the first part of his fourteenth year, he chanced one evening to be in the audience of a lecturer, in the old Tivoli Garden Theatre, on Market Street, who was discoursing on the properties of nitrous oxide, or, as it is more commonly called, laughing-gas. The lecturer invited any of his auditors who desired to come forward and inhale the exhilarating aura. The chance was one just suited to the disposition of our hero. He stepped up and applied his mouth and nostrils to the bag. In a moment, as the air began to work, his ruling passion broke forth. Striking out right and left, to the no slight consternation of those nearest him, he advanced to the front of the stage, and declaimed a famous passage from the stage-copy of Shakspeare,—
"What ho! young Richmond, ho! 'tis Richard calls:
I hate thee for thy blood of Lancaster,"—
with extraordinary energy and effect. John Swift, an eminent lawyer of that day, and a very cultivated and generous man, was so struck by the dramatic talent and force of the lad that he took the pains to seek him out and make his acquaintance, befriending him in the noblest manner, and often thereafter giving him kind counsel and assistance.
Despite his constantly-growing zeal and devotion to dramatic matters, Edwin kept his situation in the ship-chandlery store, and was tolerably faithful to its duties. But his heart was not in the business. The counter and the ledger had no charms for him. All his young enthusiasm was for the play-book and the stage. His employer often found him in a corner conning Shakspeare, or in the back office practising declamation. He said to him one day, with a shake of his wiseacre head, "Ah, boy, this theatrical infatuation will be your ruin! The way to thrive is to be attentive to trade. Did you ever know a play-actor to get rich?" But all this prudential advice, this chill preaching of the shop, was utterly ineffectual on the strong imaginative bent and passionate ambition it encountered.
While carrying parcels home to the customers of the firm, he sometimes met with such adventures as a boy of his high and pugnacious spirit would be likely to meet with in those times, when wrestling and fighting were much more common, especially among boys, than they are now. On a certain occasion, jostled and jeered by an older and bigger boy than himself, he said, "You wait till I can deliver this bundle and get back here, and I will fight you to your heart's content." The fellow agreed to it. Away hied Edwin, and deposited his goods. He then ran home and put on an old suit of clothes, to be in better fighting trim. His mother asked him what he was going to do; and when he explained, she begged him not to go, and used such arguments as she could command to impress him with the wickedness and vulgarity of such brutal encounters. But all in vain. "Mother," he said, "I have pledged my word; I must do it. It would be mean not to." And he tore away, repaired to the rendezvous, and, after a tough bout, gave his insulter a terrible thrashing, and went quietly back to the ship-chandlery. It must be confessed that, though inwardly tender and generous, he was rough, easy to quarrel with, and not slow to go to the extremes of fists and heels.
But one of the severest traits in him, all his life, one of the deepest characteristics of his individuality, was the barbaric intensity of his wrath against those who wronged him, the Indian-like bitterness and tenacity of the spirit of revenge in his breast when aroused by what he thought any wanton injury. He never laid claim to the spirit of saintliness, but rather trod it under foot, as affectation, pitiful weakness, or hypocrisy. This marked a gross limit of his moral sensibility in his own personal relations, though he could keenly appreciate the finest touches of abnegation and magnanimity in others. To justice, as he saw it, he was always loyal. But, when his selfhood was wounded, the pain of the bruise not rarely, perhaps, made him a little blind or perverse. Two anecdotes of his boyhood throw light on this point. In the one example he was, as it would seem, morally without excuse; in the other, pardonable, but scarcely to be approved.
He was eating an apple in the street, when he came to a horse attached to a baker's cart, standing beside the curb-stone. He amused himself by holding the apple under the horse's nose, and, as often as the animal tried to bite it, suddenly snatching it away, and fetching him a blow on the mouth. At that mischievous moment the driver of the cart came up, and, crying out, "What are you doing there, you damned little scoundrel?" gave him a piercing cut across the leg with his whip. The little fellow limped off in excruciating pain, but carefully marked his enemy. The passion for revenge burned in him. He kept a sharp lookout. Within a week he spied the driver a short distance ahead. He picked up a stone, took good aim, and, striking him on the back of the head, knocked him from his cart into the street. He then dismissed the subject from his mind, satisfied that he had squared accounts. Many would hold that, instead of squaring accounts, he had only made a bad matter worse. But such was his way of regarding it; and the business of a biographer is to tell the truth.