When Frohman first read "Peter Pan" he was so entranced that he could not resist telling all his friends about it. He would stop them in the street and act out the scenes. Yet it required the most stupendous courage and confidence to put on a play that, from the manuscript, sounded like a combination of circus and extravaganza; a play in which children flew in and out of rooms, crocodiles swallowed alarm-clocks, a man exchanged places with his dog in its kennel, and various other seemingly absurd and ridiculous things happened. But Charles believed in Barrie. He had gone to an extraordinary expense to produce "Peter Pan" in England. He duplicated it in the United States. No other character in all her repertory made such a swift appeal to Miss Adams as _Peter Pan_. She saw in him the idealization of everything that was wonderful and wistful in childhood. The way she prepared for the part was characteristic of her attitude toward her work. She took the manuscript with her up to the Catskills. She isolated herself for a month; she walked, rode, communed with nature, but all the while she was studying and absorbing the character which was to mean so much to her career. In the great friendly open spaces in which little _Peter_ himself delighted, and where he was king, she found her inspiration for interpretation of the wondrous boy. The try-out was made in Washington at the old National Theater. It went with considerable success, although the first-night audience was somewhat mystified and did not know exactly what to say or do. It was when the play was launched on November 6, 1905, at the Empire Theater in New York, that little _Peter_ really came into his own. The human birds, the droll humor, the daring allegory, above all the appealing, almost tragic, spectacle of _Peter_ playing his pipe up in the tree-tops of the Never-Never Land, all contributed to an event that was memorable in more ways than one. On this night developed the remarkable and thrilling feature in "Peter Pan" which made the adorable dream-child the best beloved of all American children. It came when _Peter_ rushed forward to the footlights in the frantic attempt to save the life of his devoted little _Tinker Bell_, and asked: "Do you believe in fairies?" It registered a whole new and intimate relation between actress and audience, and had the play possessed no other distinctive feature, this alone would have at once lifted it to a success that was all its own. [Illustration: _MAUDE ADAMS_] This episode became one of the many marvelous features of the memorable run of "Peter Pan" at the Empire. Nearly every child in New York--and subsequently, on the long and successful tours that Miss Adams made in "Peter Pan," their brothers everywhere--became acquainted with the episode and longed impatiently to have a part in it. On one occasion, fully fifteen minutes before Miss Adams made her appeal, a little child rose in a box at the Empire and said: "_I_ believe in fairies."