Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 15, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 April 1894 — SALVINI AND BOOTH. [ARTICLE]

SALVINI AND BOOTH.

Kxtraordinary Receipt* of Their Performance* In Three Cities. From California we returned to New York, where I had an offer to play for three weeks with the famous artist, Edwin Booth, to give three performances of “Othello" a week, with Booth aslagoand me as Othello. The cities selected were New York, Philadelphia and Boston, writes Salvinl, in the Century. As the managers had to hire the theaters by the week, they proposed that we should give “Hamlet” as a fourth performance, with Booth as Hamlet and me as the Ghost I accepted with the greatest pleasure, flattered to be associated with so distinguished and sympathetic an artist I cannot find epithets to characterize those twelve perform ancesl The word "extraordinary” is not Mongh, nor is “splendid;" I will eub them “unique,• for I do not be-

lieve that any stmilir combination has ever aroused such interest in North America. To give some idea of it, I will say that the receipts for the twelve performances were $43,500, an average |of $3,625 a night , In Italy such receipts would be something phenomenal; in America they were very satisfactory. During this time I came to know Booth, and I found in him every quality that can characterize a gentleman. The affability and modesty of his manners rendered him justly loved and esteemed, not only by his countrymen, but by all who had the fortune to make his acquaintance. Where Old English Survives. A correspondent of the Boston Herald writes from the Hot Springs in the North Carolina Mountains: “This is the land of the ‘poor whites,’ who dwell in windy cabins among the mountains, and seem to have nothing to live upon. A kindly, hardy race of mountaineers, they live usually to old age, in spite of what seems like great privation; and they retain in their usual forms of speech many of the old English words which were commpn in Shakspeare’s time. They are apt to appeal to the rifle or shotgun in settlement of a feud, but convictions for murder are rare, although many cases come to trial. Recently in this vicinity one mountaineer was arraigned for fracturing a neighbor’s skull; and a venerable woman from the mountains was called to the witness-stand. ‘Did you ever hear Jim threaten to hurt Bill?’ asked the lawyer. T reckon I did,’ answered the witness. ‘I heerd him say he’d bust his mazzard one day when he was right smart ambitious.’ “Here is the survival of an ancient

word among the mountains of North Carolina. Hamlet says in the gravedigger's scene-. “ ‘Why, e’efi bo; and now my Lady Worm’s chapless, and knocked about the mazzard with’ a saxton’s spade; here’s fine resolution, and we had the trick to see’t. ’ “‘Ambitious’ mean ‘ugly’ in the vernacular of a mountaineer, and it is more than probable that some remote ancestor of the venerable witness was transport) l this part of the world for the mazzard’ of some fellow Briton. “The people of the lowlands coming into constant contact with those whom the Shakers call ‘world’s people,’ have lost the language which their progenitors brought with them from England when they ladded and forced the convict ssttiers back Into the mountains. But the mountain men, seeing few strangers In their rocky homes, have retained much of the original speech which they inherited from the exiles of Elizabeth's reign. ’