Scene. Cave of the experienced Manager in the centre of a labyrinth under the stage.

Manager (to energetic young Dramatist who has tracked him to his lair). Yes, young feller, I’ve read your play, and, while it’s first-class in its way, it ain’t exactly what I want. Now you seem to be a pushing, active sort of a feller—if you hadn’t been you never would have found your way in here—and if you can only get me up the sort of piece I want we can do a little business together. In writing a play you’ve got to bear one thing in mind, and that is to adapt yourself to the public taste and the resources of the theatre. Are you on?

[Pg 252]Dramatist. Certainly, sir; and I shall be only too happy to write something especially for your theatre. I think I can do it if I only get a chance. Sardou is my model.

Manager. Well, Sardou is all right enough in his way, but I’m looking after something entirely different. Now I want a strong melodrama, and I’m going to call it Only a Type-writer; or, The Pulse of the Great Metropolis. There are twenty thousand type-writers in the city, and they’ll all want to see it, and each of them will fetch her mother or her feller along with her. Then they’ll gabble about it to all the people they know—nothing like a lot of women to advertise a piece—and if there’s any go in the play at all it’ll be talked about from Harlem to the Battery before it’s been on the boards a week. Now, of course, there’s got to be a moral; in fact, you’ve got to come out pretty d—d strong with your moral. My idea[Pg 253] is this: In the first act you show the type-writer—whose folks are all gilt-edged people and ’way up—in an elegant cottage at Newport. She’s a light-hearted, innocent girl in a white muslin dress with a blue sash. I’m going to cast Pearl Livingston for the part, and she’s always crazy to make up for an innocent girl. Recollect you can’t spread the innocence and simplicity on too thick. Livingston wants to say a prayer with her hair hanging down her back, so if you can ring that in somehow it’ll be all the better. You must give her a good entrance, too, or she’ll kick like a steer.

Dramatist. Excuse me, but I don’t see exactly how a type-writer could live in a Newport cottage.

Manager. I’m coming to that right away. You see this act is just to show her as a light-hearted, innocent girl whose father has always been loaded up with dust, so she’s never known what it[Pg 254] was to holler for a sealskin sack and not get it. But in the end of the act the father goes broke and exclaims, “Merciful heavens, we are beggars!” and drops dead. His wife gives a shriek, and all the society people rush on from the wings so as to make a picture at the back, while the daughter—that’s Livingston, you know—takes the centre of the stage and says, “No, mother”—or “mommer” would sound more affectionate, maybe—“No, mommer,” she says, “not beggars yet, for I will work for you!” Curtain! Are you on to the idea?

Dramatist. Well, I believe I understand your scheme so far. But who’s the hero, and where do you get your comedy element?

Manager. Oh, the comedy is easy enough to manage, and as for the hero, I forgot to tell you that he shows up in the first act and wants to marry her, but she gives him the bounce because he’s[Pg 255] poor as a crow. Better make him an artist or something of that sort. It might be a good idea to have him a reporter, and then he can read some good strong lines about the dignity of his profession or something of that sort, just so as to catch on with the pre............