It is, naturally enough, about as difficult for the beginner to learn how to write without any real chance of slowly and gradually learning his business as it is for the young actor of to-day to learn how to act without any real experience in acting; he lacks the training of the good stock companies of twenty years ago, or of the classic drama where he had to play many small parts before he was ever trusted with a big one. He is asked now to play any part he can look, and is given leading parts to play and fails in them more from lack of experience than from lack of talent. This doesn’t in the least mean that I think the acting of twenty-five years ago was better than the acting of to-day, because I know better. The lack of the training of the old days is unfortunate, but the change in method more than makes up for it, and although at present we have few great actors we have a tremendous supply of very competent ones. Although at this writing too many of them are in Hollywood, we can still find a good cast far more easily than we can find a good play, and there are still far too many promising young actors unable to get a chance to prove their worth. But their problem is simple compared to the problem of the young playwright, now or twenty years ago. [Illustration: HARRIGAN AND HART (_From the Messmore Kendall Collection_) ] Each generation, I suppose, has its own problems, but the problem of the one starting out to win a place in a crowded and difficult profession is never easily solved. It is well, however, to remember that all these fences built up in front of us to hold us back remain firmly standing after we have managed to scramble over them and they keep on blocking the road and give a little breathing time to those who have succeeded in getting a start. It’s a tough game any way you figure it, and it’s a queer, lonely and depressing existence. A young writer must do it all himself and usually against the advice and the doubts of his acquaintances. He must run around New York with that first play under his arm until both his feet and his heart are sore, and he rarely meets any one who takes the slightest interest in it. Nobody has any faith or confidence in him; probably he has very little money—I very distinctly remember that I had none at all—he will very likely be as hungry and lonely and frightened as I was. But if the play under that young writer’s arm is a real play—and every once in a while it is—he is not a half starved lonely vagrant but a prince on a masquerade. He doesn’t know it; the cold and half contemptuous clerks and secretaries he meets can’t see through his disguise, but he is a bigger man than any of these who snub him and outranks the best of them. Soon his time will come—“The King is dead. Long live the King.” At the time I started, however, I knew nothing at all of what was ahead of me, and had, as I recall it, few doubts and no misgivings.