Joseph Jefferson; reminiscences of a fellow player . we met. He ended his letterand his last earthly communication to me with : I am still a very sick man, but I am well enoughto wish you success in your new undertaking. Jeffersons last appearance on any stage wasmade, May 7, 1904, at Paterson, New Jersey, asCaleb Plummer in Boucicaults stage adaptationof Dickenss The Cricket on the Hearth, andMr. Golightly in John Madison Mortons farceof Lend Me Five Shillings. His dramaticcareer, quoting William Winter, accordinglycovered a period of seventy-one years. It hasbeen a blessing to the world, and
Joseph Jefferson; reminiscences of a fellow player . we met. He ended his letterand his last earthly communication to me with : I am still a very sick man, but I am well enoughto wish you success in your new undertaking. Jeffersons last appearance on any stage wasmade, May 7, 1904, at Paterson, New Jersey, asCaleb Plummer in Boucicaults stage adaptationof Dickenss The Cricket on the Hearth, andMr. Golightly in John Madison Mortons farceof Lend Me Five Shillings. His dramaticcareer, quoting William Winter, accordinglycovered a period of seventy-one years. It hasbeen a blessing to the world, and has beenillustrious to the last. Dr. Johnson declared that Garricks death had eclipsed the gayety of nations and impoverishedthe public stock of harmless pleasures, a flightof rhetoric warranted by the intimacy and mutualaffection of the two men. Jefferson, of lateyears, had not kept himself so much in thepublic eye as formerly, playing but a limitednumber of weeks each season, and in his increas-ing years constantly suggesting the inevitable, 344. MR. JEFFERSON ON HIS SEVENTY-SIXTH BIRTHDAY(February 20, 1905) From a photograph taken at Palm Beach, Fla.— Probably the lastone taken of Jefferson CONCLUSION But if his death had occurred ten or fifteenyears ago, the grief at his loss would have beenmore acute, and the remark of Johnson wouldhave been more nearly applicable to him thanto Garrick, for Jefferson was known and lovedin three continents, — England, Australia, andAmerica. To the riff-raff of society, the man abouttown, the chronic first-nighter, ever on the look-out for something new to whet a jaded appetite ;to the thoughtless, frivolous, and shallow-pated,Jeffersons art meant nothing, — this to his was in the minds and hearts of the intellectualand refined, and in the souls of the plainpeople that Jefferson was securely , remembering the happiness he hadafforded them and their children, affectionatelytouched his coat as they brushed by him
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