I had seen Mr. Booth three times before. As _Brutus_, I thought he was excellent. As _Richelieu_ he was certainly magnificent; as _Iago_ ideally superb.
His _Hamlet_ was a revelation to me. After seeing the raving _Hamlet_ of Mounet-Sully, the somber _Hamlet_ of Irving, and the dreamy _Hamlet_ of Wilson Barrett, I saw this evening _Hamlet_ the philosopher, the rhetorician.
Mr. Booth is too old to play _Hamlet_ as he does, that is to say, without any attempt at making-up. He puts on a black wig, and that is all, absolutely all. It is, however, a most remarkable, subtle piece of acting in his hands.
Madame Modjeska was beautiful as _Ophelia_. No _tragédienne_ that I have ever seen weeps more naturally. In all sad situations she makes the chords of one's heart vibrate, and that without any trick or artifice, but simply by the modulations of her singularly sympathetic voice and such like natural means.
It is very seldom that you can see in America, outside of New York, more than one very good actor or actress playing together. So you may imagine the success of such a combination as Booth-Modjeska.
Every night the theater is packed from floor to ceiling, although the prices of admission are doubled.
ST. JOHNSBURY--THE STATE OF MAINE--NEW ENGLAND SELF-CONTROL--COLD CLIMATES AND FRIGID AUDIENCES--WHERE IS THE AUDIENCE?--ALL DRUNK!--A REMINISCENCE OF A SCOTCH AUDIENCE ON A SATURDAY NIGHT.
ST. Johnsbury is a charming little town perched on the top of a mountain, from which a lovely scene of hills and woods can be enjoyed. The whole country is covered with snow, and as I looked at it in the evening by the electric light, the effect was very beautiful. The town has only six thousand inhabitants, eleven hundred of whom came to hear my lecture to-night. Which is the European town of six thousand inhabitants that would supply an audience of eleven hundred people to a literary _causerie_?
St. Johnsbury has a dozen churches, a public library of 15,000 volumes, with a reading-room beautifully fitted with desks and perfectly adapted for study. A museum, a Young Men's Christian Association, with gymnasium, school-rooms, reading-rooms, play-rooms, and a lecture hall capable of accommodating over 1000 people. Who, after that, would consider himself an exile if he had to live in St. Johnsbury? There is more intellectual life in it than in any French town outside of Paris and about a dozen more large cities.