Page:The Galaxy, Volume 6.djvu/276

252 —But while the Cricket dances to jubilant music and the weird accompaniment of her shadow, while her sobs, echoing a feigned sorrow, fill the little Olympic Theatre on Broadway, and as her laughter is taken up and echoed again by a thronged and charmed audience, further up the street, at another theatre, among the noblest company of comedians now upon the stage, there is a sorrow not feigned, for one of that rare combination has gone from among them, and will return no more forever. They stand together in little knots of twos and threes, in the by-places of the stage and in the green-room, speaking quietly, tenderly of her who was greater than them all, of one the latchets of whose shoes the Fanchon was not worthy to unloose, of Mary Gannon, the grace and crown of comedy, its noblest, truest female representative, lying, with some white flowers on her breast, in her beautiful home, in an adjoining street.

On the manager's table a card is lying, bearing these words,

Blessed are the women who have no history, it is written. She had none. Her life moved purely, simply on to its serene ending, and though her death did not "eclipse the gaiety of nations," it drove the smile from the lips of thousands of her true friends for whom she had "gladdened life"—friends, between whom and her there had been no closer companionship than that which may endure between the actor and audience.

It is not easy to speak coldly and critically of this lady; she was wont to hold her audience by stronger ties than other artists hold theirs; there was ever something more than the sympathy of tears and laughter between them; they might admire the actress never so well, yet they must honor the woman more, for she was chaste as ice and pure as snow, and calumny did not touch her; her life was so bountiful, sweet, and beautiful, so filled and rounded out with charity and simple faith, that the public voice knew not whether to honor most, her home or artist life, and so honored both.

Miss Gannon was an actress at the Old Bowery in her sixth year, playing Henry in "Jack Robinson," and Julio in "The Planter and his Dog." After that she was at the old Franklin Theatre, in Chatham street, dancing with infinite grace, and so learning that charm of deportment which afterward became one of the strongest characteristics of her acting. The next season she has advanced a step, has quite left the Old Bowery behind her forever, and makes her début in an old play of Garrick's, at the elder Wallack's Theatre. The greatest Romeo and Don Cæsar and Benedict of his day—or of ours—has been watching the little lady, and hereafter she will grow to greatness and win from the old veteran the high praise of being "the first of America's female comedians." But for awhile, misfortune waits upon the manager, and he goes over to England, to contest the ground with Kemble, and Cooke, and the elder Booth. Meanwhile Mary Gannon is strolling through the South; but in the year 1848, and she is in her nineteenth year now, she is at Mitchell's Olympic, playing the first comedy and burlesque parts to charmed audiences, who regretfully bid her farewell and God-speed at the end of the season, for she has chosen a husband and home, and has turned her back upon the applause and adulation of the theatre, for awhile, until, in a few years, death comes knocking at her door, and takes away with him her husband and little children. Then poverty comes her way and lingers by her desolated hearth, and the young widow and mother, in whose heart husband and children will never die, but will live there to make her tender and