Memoirs of an editor : fifty years of American journalism / Edward P. Mitchell.

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MEMOIRS OF AN EDITOR

Ghost appeared he forgot part of his cerements and walked
on jerkily in tight-fitting underwear of drab cambric.
When the count came to the passage, "By Heaven!
I'll make a ghost of him who," etc., he drew his shining
sword and struck an attitude so fierce that the spectre
backed incontinently off the stage with his sceptre at
carry arms, in spite of loud encouragement from the
spectators. The Polonius of the evening had difficulty with
his eyebrows, which continually needed pulling down;
and when the audience shouted "Louder, Polonius!" or
"Polonius, pull down your eyebrows!" he smiled placidly
and pulled them down according to orders.
The duel with Laertes, however, went off splendidly.
The count was at his best in the Salutes or graces de l'Vp6e.
It was long after midnight when in response to loud calls,
such, perhaps, as Edwin Booth never heard from any
audience, the star of this grotesque performance appeared
before the curtain to apologize for the weakness of his
support and to dwell at considerable length upon his own
experience in Shakespearean interpretation and in the
practical application of the principles of jurisprudence.
As temporary spokesman for the Chief Editors of New
York and Ladies, I was able to assure George the Count
Joannes that I should remember his Hamlet as long as
I lived.
When I saw the captivating Hamlet of John Barrymore
not many months ago my thoughts went back not so much
to the Count Palatine in the Academy of Music as to a
yet earlier and almost equally absurd performance in the
Park Theatre in Broadway below Twenty-second Street
in November or December, 1875. Mr. A. Oakey Hall,
formerly Tweed's mayor of New York and a member

of the distinguished law firm of Brown, Hall & Vanderpool,
aspired at that time to distinction on the stage. In collaboration with some literary men-rumor pointed to
William Henry Hurlbut as one of them, if memory