Directing, too, has become very much more important than it used to be, at least in the sense that there are more good directors, although among the list of men whom I consider to have been the best directors I have ever known, several were of the theater of years ago. Augustin Daly was a master; no man of to-day is any better; for years his company was quite justly the pride of America. A. M. Palmer was a man of taste and shrewd knowledge of the theater. He was the first man I ever worked with and one of the best. Palmer was a man of great cultivation and in his appearance amazingly different from any of our managers to-day. He was a very dignified little man who wore a brand of whiskers now quite obsolete, and his manner always seemed to me to be more suited to the pulpit than to the stage. He was, I am sure, both a worthy and a deeply religious man, and it was his custom at the end of the last rehearsal to stand on the stage, surrounded by his company, and raise his hands in an attitude of benediction and say: “Ladies and gentlemen—now we are in the hands of God.” I recall an occasion when he rather spoiled the effect of this pious observation by turning to the stage electrician and continuing in the same breath: “And for God’s sake don’t you forget that first act light cue again.” [Illustration: _A. M. Palmer._ “The first man I ever worked with and one of the best.” (_From the Messmore Kendall Collection_) ] [Illustration: “Augustin Daly was a master; no man of to-day is any better.” (_From the Messmore Kendall Collection_) ] Charles Hoyt, probably the best farce writer the world has ever known, was a fine director. All of his plays were built at rehearsal and on the road before their first New York engagement. It was his custom to engage a cast of sure-fire comedians and fashion his play around them. He would call on Tim Murphy, Otis Harlan, May Irwin and actors of that standing, and start out with his central idea, always an ironic snapshot of some social or political absurdity. When his play first opened, it would run at the most about thirty minutes, and each of the performers would be called upon to sing two or three songs or do their specialty. Out they would go, usually into New England, in the early spring, and as the days passed there would be more and more dialogue and fewer and fewer songs, until in the end the farce would have been written and ready for its New York opening. Hoyt built in this way A TEXAS STEER, A TRIP TO CHINATOWN, A RAG BABY, A TIN SOLDIER and several others, all of them sound farces and all of them very successful. David Belasco then, as now, was a master of the mechanics of the theater, and is a man who always has amazed me and won my very honest admiration. His love of the theater as an institution is, I am sure, as deep and as real as mine, and his skill and patience and perfection of detail had a great influence upon the growth of our theater.