At last, half twinkle of humor and half glimmer of dread, he gets himself to the point of asking after Dame Van Winkle, and is told that she has been dead these ten years.

Then like a flash came that wonderful Jeffersonian change of facial expression, and as the white head drops upon the arms stretched before him on the table he says: "Well, she led me a hard life, a hard life, but she was the wife of my bosom, she was _meine frau!_" I did not see the revised, or rather the newly-created and written, Rip Van Winkle until Mr.Jefferson brought it to America and was playing it at Niblo's Garden in New York.

Between himself and Dion Boucicault a drama carrying all the possibilities, all the lights and shadows of his genius had been constructed.

In the first act he sang a drinking song to a wing accompaniment delightfully, adding much to the tone and color of the situation.

The exact reversal of the Lear suggestion in the last act was an inspiration, his own and not Boucicault's.