Charlie’s devotion to Jackie Coogan is explicable to me after one glimpse of the child. So, too, are the words of a certain woman I know. “There is something about that boy,” says the latter, “that always makes me feel like crying. I don’t know why, for he seems so gay and happy.” I myself caught in an instant that same touching, even solemn, quality. What is it? Perhaps because in those wide childish eyes one feels a wisdom brought from some other world and not yet dimmed by that of this. I feel that I can not bring my recollections of Chaplin to a close at a point more deeply significant of his artist’s nature than the account of my own preview of “The Kid.” When he finished with this picture, attended as it was by his conflict with Mildred Harris, he was in an abysmal state. “Sam,” said he one day, “I wish when you have nothing else to do you’d come over to my studio and look at my new picture. I’d like to get your opinion of it--advice, too, if you have any to offer.” “What do you think of it?” I asked him. “Rotten!” he answered. “I’m awfully discouraged over it.” I had heard such comments from him before on similar occasions, for by the time that he has finished a story he has so completely lost all sense of perspective that nobody can convince him that the production has one glimmering ray of merit. Consequently I attached no importance to this mood of his. Putting down his words to the divine discontent of genius, I went over that very day with Gouverneur Morris to see “The Kid.” Even my prejudice in favour of anything that Charlie does did not prepare me for this supreme manifestation of his artistry. Just as the world was afterward to do, Morris and I laughed and cried and gasped as the wonderful story unrolled before us. As for Charlie, he looked at us unbelievingly. He simply could not make himself understand that we were not feigning this appreciation. “Charlie,” I said after it was all over, “if you never had done or never should do another picture your name would go down into history as the creator of ‘The Kid.’” With that peculiarly eager, wistful expression of his he looked at me. “You really think it’s good then?” he asked. “You’re not just saying this to make me feel encouraged?” “If you don’t believe me,” I answered, “I’ll call in a few others to help convince you. I tell you,” I added, “let me do something, won’t you? Let me give a dinner over at my studio and then we’ll show them ‘The Kid.’”