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Show A VISIT TO M'CULLOUGH. The Actor's Wife and Friends at the Bloomingdale Asylum. By this time the actor's room was reached. The door was ajar. Mr. Mc-Cullough Mc-Cullough was lying on a lounge, sleeping as usual. The attendant went in and roused him. He rose wearily, but recognized recog-nized the visitors readily enough. Mrs. McCullough sat beside him at the foot of the lounge. She is a little, slender woman, with a pleasant motherly face and an engaging smile. She looks so much like the mother of Lotta, the actress, act-ress, that people often inquire whether the two ladies are of kin. The actor looked at her for an instant. "Ah, Lydia," then he said, "is that you, dear?" "It is I," she answered, and gladly added in a whisper to her counsel : "Yes, he is much better to-day. The other day it was a long, long time before he knew me at all." The tragedian was silent a long time after that. He was dressed very neatly in light tweed, and his thin grey hair was adjusted in the style that he has always favored. At a first glimpse one would think he was just as of old, only thinner and paler, as if he were just recovering from an illness. But when he lifted his eyes everything changed. The light in them, the wierd shining of a mind disordered, dis-ordered, told how terrible the change really was. He sat quite still, buttoning and unbuttoning his coat again and again, and gazing vacantly around the handsome and cosily-furnished room. "Thev tell me you were out riding in the grounds to-day," said Captain Connor at length. "Yes," the actor answered with a hesitancy hes-itancy and a twitching of the lips that told of paralysis. "Oh, yeBl" and then, hi a moment he added, "and yesterday, why yesterday I was in Mexico," and his nervous fingers went on toying with the buttons of his coat. After a while he turned to his wife and said: "What are you doing here? What pleasure can you find in a madhouse?" mad-house?" He rose abruptly, tottered across to the wardrobe, took out his white summer hat and said : "Well, I must be going now." He walked once or twice round the room and then sat down again and went on with the old work of the buttons. He often does that, the attendant atten-dant said, and sometimes he will pack up all his clothes and his little keepsakes, only to forget his purpose as soon as the work is completed. "The man who owns this place must be very rich," he said presently. "And what cio you think, he has presented it all to us," and he laughed low and joyfully. joy-fully. After a time he said he should like to walk. He rose, but his step was very uncertain, and if the arm of Mr. Johnson had not been placed round him he must have fallen. His limbs grow weaker constantly, the attendant said, and soon he will hardly be able to walk at all. He, with the lawyer and Captain Conner, walked up and down together for a few minutes, the actor looking very bright and contented. Presently a visitor visi-tor came by, and the actor, with a suggestion sug-gestion of his gallant old manner, introduced intro-duced Captain Conner as Mr. Johnson, and Mr. Johnson as his sister. Mr. Johnson John-son kindly pretended to consider it all a jest, and the actor vacantly joined in the rather hollow laugh. Mr. McCullough sat down on a bench in the corridor and went back to work on the coat. He did not notice the visitors at all for a long time after that. When they were leaving, however, he shook each one by the hand and kindly said good by. But when one of them a moment afterwards went back to say another word, the actor's eyes gazed glassily up into his face. Only the wild light was in them. The visitors were already forgotten. Philadelphia Press. j |
