Page:The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 19.djvu/765

1867.] Mr. Jefferson arrives at the same results from a mental review of the merits of the situation, by profound study of all its salient points, and, above all, through the medium of that something called genius, inherited from his father. Mr. Clarke, when not playing in imitation of others, is never still, his very ears and scalp are instinct with motion ; he is never graceful, he is amusing out of the fulness of life, enjoying his own acting as keenly as his audiences do, and showing in his face and walk and gesture that he does so. Mr. Jefferson is always graceful, always unconscious of himself and of his audience, and only conscious of his author.

It is more years ago than we care to remember, since we crossed over into the east side of the city of New York, one night, to see a young actor, who was drawing vast crowds to the “Old Bowery,” personate a noble fireman, named Mose, in a drama sacred to that classic locality and the temple of everdying Kirby. We are happy to say that the “noble Fireman” of that day — probably from his close resemblance to the “noble Savage” — has almost disappeared from the earth. We imagine that Colonel Wilson had a good deal to do with his extinction, and, so far, we are that gentleman’s debtor. The drama was called “ The New York Fireman,” when played in that city, but it found a new name wherever the young actor in question was invited to produce it. The actor was John E. Owens, a favorite comedian with Baltimore audiences. The drama was altogether a very bad drama, not elevating in its tendencies even to the audiences of that neighborhood, — not largely calculated to raise either their dramatic taste or their morals; yet there was something in Mr. Owens’s portraiture of the New York Rough, so excellent, natural, and marked, that there was no reason for astonishment in the crowds he drew to witness it. It might be a very bad specimen of a man, yet it was as true to its order as one brick from a Philadelphia house is to the entire building. As he played it, Mose was a jolly butcher-boy, generous, impulsive, chivalric, somewhat addicted to waving the American flag, slang, running “wid de machine,” and “going” with Elizer; in fact, he was as devotedly attached to that young person as Jacques Strop to Robert Macaire, or Harlequin to Columbine. Another thing to which he was addicted, and which slightly conflicted with his general nobility of character, was “free fights,” in which he “ put in big licks,” and which, to use an expression of his own, not elegant but terse, he “gassed” about rather more than befitted a modest gentleman. He also affected a red flannel shirt, a black beaver hat—about which was a band of crape—jauntily perched over his left ear, and black pantaloons tucked into frightful boots. The fashion in which Mose wore his hair, very short behind the ears and very long before, was unknown to the barbers on the west side of the town. These forward locks were soaped, and he used them with peculiar emphasis, by twisting them around his fingers, whenever he desired to give weight to his utterances. In short, the Mose of real life was an unmitigated nuisance, whom it was well to abate, and in the drama he was never an agreeable character to us ; yet for a number of years the announcement that Mr. Owens would appear in that part at the Bowery, or at any other theatre in the country, would attract audiences for months together.

On the night mentioned, when we went over into the Bowery, — having to fight our way to our seat through a surging mass of human beings who blocked up the corridors and the street without,— Mr. Owens also performed a broad comedy part in the farce of “ The Wild Indian,” which performance, we are compelled to say, was not a success. We had seen Mr. Burton in the same character only a few evenings before, and that stoutish gentleman, whose oily humor “ larded the lean earth ” as he walked, played it out to a different conclusion. But we said of Mr. Owens,