" {21} When they have strutted
and fretted their hour upon the stage, let them not be heard no
more--but let them be heard sometimes to say that they are happy in
their old age. When they have passed for the last time from behind
that glittering row of lights with which we are all familiar, let
them not pass away into gloom and darkness,--but let them pass into
cheerfulness and light--into a contented and happy home.
This is the object for which we have met; and I am too familiar
with the English character not to know that it will be effected.
When we come suddenly in a crowded street upon the careworn
features of a familiar face--crossing us like the ghost of pleasant
hours long forgotten--let us not recal those features with pain, in
sad remembrance of what they once were, but let us in joy recognise
it, and go back a pace or two to meet it once again, as that of a
friend who has beguiled us of a moment of care, who has taught us
to sympathize with virtuous grief, cheating us to tears for sorrows
not our own--and we all know how pleasant are such tears. Let such
a face be ever remembered as that of our benefactor and our friend.
I tried to recollect, in coming here, whether I had ever been in
any theatre in my life from which I had not brought away some
pleasant association, however poor the theatre, and I protest, out
of my varied experience, I could not remember even one from which I
had not brought some favourable impression, and that, commencing
with the period when I believed the clown was a being born into the
world with infinite pockets, and ending with that in which I saw
the other night, outside one of the "Royal Saloons," a playbill
which showed me ships completely rigged, carrying men, and
careering over boundless and tempestuous oceans.
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