In a week or less the tendency to derangement in Booth became more developed.  One night, when he was to act, he did not appear; nor could he be found at his lodgings.  He did not come home that night.  Next morning he was found in the woods, several miles from the city, wandering through the snow.  He was taken care of.  His derangement proved to be temporary, and his reason returned in a few days.  He soon left the city.  But before he went away he sent to me the following note, which I copy from the original faded paper, now lying before me:—­

“—­Theatre,

“January 18, 1834.

“MY DEAR SIR,

“Allow me to return you my grateful acknowledgments for your prompt and benevolent attention to my request last Wednesday night.  Although I am convinced your ideas and mine thoroughly coincide as to the real cause of man’s bitter degradation, yet I fear human means to redeem him are now fruitless.  The Fire must burn, and Prometheus endure his agony.  The Pestilence of Asia must come again, ere the savage will be taught humanity.  May you escape!  God bless you, Sir!

“J.B.  BOOTH.”

Certainly I may call this “an odd adventure” for a young minister, less than six months in his profession.  But it left in my mind a very pleasant impression of this great tragedian.  It may be asked why he came to me, the youngest and newest clergyman in the place.  The reason he gave me himself.  I was a Unitarian.  He said he had more sympathy with me on that account, as he was of Jewish descent, and a Monotheist.

MY OUT-DOOR STUDY.

The noontide of the summer-day is past, when all Nature slumbers, and when the ancients feared to sing, lest the great god Pan should be awakened.  Soft changes, the gradual shifting of every shadow on every leaf, begin to show the waning hours.  Ineffectual thunder-storms have gathered and gone by, hopelessly defeated.  The floating-bridge is trembling and resounding beneath the pressure of one heavy wagon, and the quiet fishermen change their places to avoid the tiny ripple that glides stealthily to their feet above the half-submerged planks.  Down the glimmering lake there are miles of silence and still waters and green shores, overhung with a multitudinous and scattered fleet of purple and golden clouds, now furling their idle sails and drifting away into the vast harbor of the South.  Voices of birds, hushed first by noon and then by possibilities of tempest, cautiously begin once more, leading on the infinite melodies of the June afternoon.  As the freshened air invites them forth, so the smooth and stainless water summons us.  “Put your hand upon the oar,” says Charon in the old play to Bacchus, “and you shall hear the sweetest songs.”  The doors of the boathouse swing softly open, and the slender wherry, like a water-snake, steals silently in the wake of the dispersing clouds.