At the close of the act, after the furious applause, the flowers, and the curtain calls for company, actress, and author, there was a clamor behind the scenes for a speech from the founder. The company gathered about Brainard and insisted that he “must say something.” “You talked to ’em when I was down, do you remember?” Melody remarked. “I think you ought to say a word now that I am up!” So for the second and last time Brainard faced an audience in the People’s Theater, and the irrepressible young actress was the occasion for both his speeches. In a few rapid words he reviewed the purposes he had had in mind in opening the theater, two years before. “We have made many mistakes, of course. Perhaps some of you may think that we have made more mistakes than anything else. We have learned a great deal; and first of all, that in our country there is no ‘people’—no _one_ public. At least, they haven’t patronized their own theater! But I can’t think that we have altogether failed, after such a night as this. “One of our desires was to produce truthful American plays of American life. _Her Great Adventure_ is American to the core, and you seem to think it good. Another object was to discover and educate persons of unusual dramatic talent, to create artists and free them from the base compromises of the commercial stage. To-night you have witnessed the début of such a talent. Having given the world _Her Great Adventure_ and Miss Melody White, who shall say that we have failed? . . .” After the play, the company gathered in the library for supper, to celebrate their triumph. It was Brainard’s custom to give such a feast at every premiere, but to-night there was among the fifty or sixty guests an unaccustomed air of success and intoxication that bubbled into speeches and songs and kept them until long after midnight. At last, after dreary failures, contempt, and neglect, the People’s had achieved a real, big, popular success! The critics had scattered to tell all New York to go to the People’s Theater in West Twelfth Street, to see _Her Great Adventure_ and a real American actress. “We shan’t be closing right off, I reckon,” Miss White whispered across the table to Brainard. “Not as soon as I expected!” he replied with a smile. When the party finally broke up, he looked to see the successful author lead away his triumphant star; but, to his surprise, Farson went off with some young men, to finish his triumph with them at a club. Brainard questioned the actress with his eyes. “Yes, you’ve got to take me home in your car! Cissie has left. Don’t you see that I have waited until all the women are gone, and now you are making me ask you for a ride outright?” “I merely wished to efface myself before the hero of the occasion,” he replied joyfully. “No need of such consideration. He’s left me to cab it up alone.” “Have you already had the usual tiff between two collaborators?”