Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 8.djvu/256

376 ARTISTS AND AUTHORS gular chance, they were rescued from the danger that threatened them in the clos- ing of the theatre by a municipal law trumped up in the interest of religious revivalists, by the adroitness of a young lawyer, who proved to be none other than Abraham Lincoln. In Memphis, when bad business had closed the thea-" tre, young Jefferson's pluck and ready wit saved the family purse from absolute collapse. A city ordinance had been passed, requiring that all carts, drays, and public vehicles should be numbered ; and the boy, hearing of this, called at the mayor's office, and, explaining the situation that had obliged his father to ex- change acting for sign-painting, applied in his name for the contract for painting the numbers — and obtained it ! The new industry furnished father and son with a month's work, and some jobs at sign-painting helped still further to make life easier. From Memphis the family went to Mobile, where they hoped to rest after their long wanderings, and where it was also hoped the children, Joseph and his sis- ter, might be put to school. But the yellow fever was raging in Mobile, and they had been in the city only a fortnight when Mr. Jefferson was attacked by the dis- ease and died. In Mobile, too, the good Mary died, and Mrs. Jefferson was left alone to care for herself and her children as she could. She had no longer a heart for acting, and she decided to open a boarding-house for actors, while Joseph and his sister earned a small stipend by variety work in the theatre. More years of hardship followed — the trio of mother and children wandering over the country, south and west : in Mississippi and Mexico, seeing life in all its phases of ill luck and disappointment, with faint gleams of success here and there, but meeting all with a spirit of such cheerful bravery as makes the dark- est experience yield a pleasure in the telling. Surely, it might soften the heart of the sourest enemy of the stage to read the spirit in which this family met the long-continued crosses of their professional life. Joseph Jefferson tells the story of his career so modestly, that it is hard to discover just when it was that success first began to turn a smiling face upon his efforts. Yet it would seem as if, for himself, the day broke when he created the part of Asa Trenchard in "Our American Cousin." He says that up to 1858, when he acted that part, he had been always more or less a "legitimate" actor, that is, one who has his place with others in a stock company, and never thinks of himself as an individual and single attraction — a star, as it is called. While engaged with this part, it suddenly occurred to him that in acting Asa Trenchard he had, for the first time in his life on the stage, spoken a pathetic speech ; up to that time all with him had been pure comedy. Now he had found a part in which he could move his audience to tears as well as smiles. This was to him a delightful discovery, and he looked about for a new part in which he could repeat the experiment. One day in summer, as he lay in the loft of a barn reading in a book he well calls delightful, Pierre Irving's "Life and Letters of Washington Irving," he learned that the great writer had seen him act the part of Goldfinch. in Holcroft's " Road to Ruin," and that he reminded him of his grandfather, Joseph Jefferson, " in look, gesture, size, and make." Naturally pleased to find