Democratic Sentinel, Volume 22, Number 39, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 October 1898 — ANECDOTE OF BOOTH. [ARTICLE]

ANECDOTE OF BOOTH.

Lawrence Hatton Telia How He Fell Under Richelieu's Spell. Booth chanced to be in a particularly happy frame of mind—and he was often cheerful and happy, tradition .to the contrary notwithstanding. He was smoking the inevitable pipe, and he was arrayed in the costume of Richelieu, with his feet upon the table, submitting patiently to the manipulations of his wardrobe man or “dresser.” After a few words of greeting the call boy knocked at the door and said that Mr. Booth was wanted at a certain “left lower entrance.” The protagonist jumped up quickly, and asked if I would stay where I was and keep his pipe alight, or go along with him and see him “lunch the cuss of Rum,” quoting the words of George L. Fox, who had been producing recently a ludicrously clever burlesque of Booth in the same part. I followed him to the wings, and stood by his side while he waited for bis cue. It was the fourth act of the drama, I remember, and the stage was set as a garden, nothing of which was visible from our position but the flies and the back of the wings; and we might have been placed in a great bare barn, so far as any scenic effect wa3 apparent Adrian, Baradas, and the conspirators were speaking, and at an opposite entrance, waiting for her cue, was the Julie of the evening. She was a good woman and an excellent actress, but unfortunately not a personal favorite with the star, who called my attention to the bismuth with which she was covered, and said that if she got any off It on to his new scarlet cloak he would pinch her black and blue, pufflng volumes of smoke into my face as he spoke. When the proper time came he rushed upon the stage, with a parting injunction not to let his pipe go out; and with the great meerschaum In nay own mouth I saw the heroine of the play cast herself into his arms, and noticed, to my great amusement, that she did smear the robes of my Lord Cardinal with the greasy white stuff he so much disliked. I winked back at the half-comic, half-angry glance he shot towards me over Julie’s snowy shoulders. I half expected to hear the real scream he had threatened to cause her to utter. I thought of nothing but the humorous, absurd side of the situation; I was eager to keep the pipe going. And lo! he raised his hand and spoke those familiar lines: “Around her form I draw the awful circle of our solemn church. Flace but a foot within that hallowed ground, and on thy head, yea, though It wear a crown, I’ll launch the curse of Rome!” Every head upon the stage was uncovered, and I found my own hat In my hand! I forgot all the tomfoolery we bad been indulging in; I forgot his pipe, and my promise regarding it; I forgot that I had been a habitual theater-goer all my life; I forgot that I was a Protestant heretic, and that it was nothing but stage play; I forgot everything, except the fact that I was standing in the presence of the great, visible head of the Catholic religion in France, and that I was ready to drop upon my knees with the rest of them at his invocation. —Harper’s Magazine.