THEKLA [_goes toward Adolf with outstretched arms_]. Adolf! [_Adolf sinks down in his chair by the table on the left. Thekla throws herself over him and caresses him._] Adolf! My darling child, are you alive? Speak! Speak! Forgive your wicked Thekla! Forgive me! Forgive me! Forgive me! Little brother must answer. Does he hear? My God, he doesn't hear me! He's dead! Good God! O my God! Help! Help us! GUSTAV. Quite true, she loves him as well--poor creature! [_Curtain._] AUTUMN FIRES A COMEDY BY GUSTAV WIED TRANSLATED BY BENJAMIN F. GLAZER. Copyright, 1920, by Benjamin F. Glazer. All rights reserved. PERSONS HELMS, } KRAKAU, } HANSEN, } JOHNSTON, } [_Old Men, inmates of an old men's home_]. HAMMER, } BUFFE, } BOLLING, } KNUT [_An eighteen-year-old boy_]. The professional and amateur stage rights are reserved by the translator, Mr. Benjamin F. Glazer, Editorial Department, _The Press_, Philadelphia, Pa., to whom all requests for permission to produce the play should be made. AUTUMN FIRES A COMEDY IN ONE ACT BY GUSTAV WIED [_The room of Helms and Krakau in the Old Men's Home. The time is afternoon of a late September day. There is a window at right looking out on the street and another at left overlooking a courtyard. There is a single door back center which opens into a corridor on both sides of which are similar doors in long regular rows and at the end of which is a stairway from the lower floors._ _An imaginary line divides the room into two equal parts. Helms lives on the street side and Krakau on the side nearest the courtyard. In each division there is a bed, chiffonier, a cupboard, a table, a sofa and several chairs. The stove is on Krakau's side, but by way of compensation Helms has an upholstered arm chair with a tall back. A lamp hangs in the exact center of the ceiling._ _Though there is a low screen which can be used as partial partition between the two divisions it is now folded and standing against the back wall, and the two tables are placed down center, end to end, so that the place is for all present purposes a single room._ _Helms' side is conspicuously ill kept and in disorder; Krakau's side is spick and span. On Helms' table there is a vase filled with flowers and near it a pair of gray woolen socks and a pair of heavy mittens. There is also a photograph of a boy in a polished nickel standing-frame._ _Helms, his spectacles on his nose, sits in his great arm chair at the table and reads a newspaper._ _Krakau sits next to him working out a problem on a chess board._ _There is a short pause after the curtain rises._] KRAKAU. There, I've done it again. HELMS [_without looking up from his paper_]. It's easy enough if one cheats. KRAKAU. Who cheats?