I hope that no one who reads these rather rambling notes of mine will think that I have any desire to deny the woman playwright any particle of credit, but I use the word playwright as I use the word actor, to describe any one who devotes themselves to these arts, either man or woman. Sex seems rather unimportant to me beside the fact that one can act or write. Of course some of our fine plays have been written by women, and many of the greatest actors the world has ever known have been of the feminine sex. It would be difficult to name three men who ranked as actors beside Bernhardt, Duse and Charlotte Cushman, and in the theater of to-day I dare any one to make a list of five men who could stand comparison with Mrs. Fiske, Jane Cowl, Pauline Lord, Helen Hayes and Ethel Barrymore. Through the nineties Charles Frohman produced a long line of well-made English dramas, and the Pinero school of expert craftsmen took the place of the writers of polite melodrama. Charles Kline brought his skill in bringing forward controversial subjects of timely interest and Clyde Fitch arrived with his box of parlor tricks. Edward Sheldon came down from Harvard with about the first authentic message and in him I have always felt the spark of the true dramatist. Eugene Walter in THE EASIEST WAY produced the first important American play unless some of the less widely known of the James A. Hearn plays deserve that rating. Personally I thought MARGUERITE FLEMING a very fine thing. But THE EASIEST WAY was a little after the time I have been writing of and my problem at that moment was to learn a simpler trade. As it happens, I have lived my personal life rather away from my fellow workers of the theater, not because I haven’t always valued the friendship of actors but because I have been a miser of my time. I have never been much of a club man and nothing at all of a social butterfly. I am sure that the sight of me, pushed into evening clothes by a stern wife and perspiring copiously in an effort to conceal my rage and rebellion, is enough to cast a pall over any social gathering. Even in Hollywood, where dinner guests may be more readily hired than anywhere else on earth, I, if I should lose my credit at my hotel, would undoubtedly starve to death. I have never even been a member of the Lambs Club and, for no other reason than that by not allowing myself to get into the habit of having anything to do but my work, I have naturally gained a good many hours. During my time as a dramatist, during which I have written between two and three hundred plays, I have had, if we figure twelve characters to a play, somewhere around three thousand actors to play these parts. Naturally I have known all these men and women well and, as I have seen practically every drama, farce and comedy of any importance at all that has been produced during all these thirty-five years, I may claim fairly enough an acquaintance with our American players.