It took me some months to figure all this out and to experiment with my different forms, months of very hard work, as I wrote all day and every night went to the fifteen-cent gallery of one of the popular-priced houses, making a real study, not of the plays but of the audiences. When the very hard-boiled gentleman who sat next to me wept or laughed or applauded, I wasn’t at first always sure of his reason, my duller mind not at that time responding to the sentimental dramatic or comedy cue as quickly as his trained intelligence, and I made a point of falling into conversation with my neighbors in an effort to share as fully in the delight of those present as was possible for an unfortunate inhibited by a Harvard background. After a time, trained by my comrades in the packed and poorly ventilated galleries, I found myself thrilling with delight to the noble if somewhat banal sentiment of such good old phrases as: “Rags are royal raiment when worn for virtue’s sake,” and taking the utmost satisfaction in the retribution that always followed the villain and in the sweet, and somewhat sticky, rewards of those whose feet had never strayed from the straight and narrow path. Of course life was never like that, but just as obviously it ought to be, and to the dull lives of the working people of thirty-five years ago these absurd dramas of ours brought almost their only glimpse of romance. The old melodramas were practically motion pictures, as one of the first tricks I learned was that my plays must be written for an audience who, owing to the huge, uncarpeted, noisy theaters, couldn’t always hear the words and who, a large percentage of them having only recently landed in America, couldn’t have understood them in any case. I therefore wrote for the eye rather than the ear and played out each emotion in action, depending on my dialogue only for the noble sentiments so dear to audiences of that class. With my mind made up to a conquest of the sensational melodrama field I worked hard on my first script and in the course of time had it ready. Curiously enough I had turned out a good play, rather above the usual specimen of its kind, and as a matter of fact one of the most honest and complete successes I have ever had. I knew little of its worth at the time, but I liked the thing, not unusual in a young dramatist, and I made up my mind to have it produced. To that end I made up a list of theatrical managers starting with the A’s and ending with the X’s and set out to call on all of them. I don’t remember much about the A’s but the B’s were led by the name of William A. Brady. For a week I called at his office daily with my play under my arm. There seemed to be a certain vagueness among Mr. Brady’s clerks as to when he could be seen and after five or six days I ventured to ask one of them where Mr. Brady was, to be met with the heart-felt answer: “I wish to God I knew.” Which goes to prove after all how slight are the changes the years bring.