This character was always a humble and faithful friend of the lovers and was always in love with the soubrette. I recall once trying to have this character in love with some one else—but I had to rewrite the play. The audience got too bewildered. 8. THE SECOND HEAVY. He was just a bum, a tool of the villain’s, and as it was usual to kill him along toward the middle of the second act, we never found it necessary to engage a very good actor. * * * * * These eight made up the cast and to them we added two or three utility actors to play such “walking parts” as the plot demanded, but no matter what the play these eight characters were always in it. If they hadn’t been I am sure the audience would have demanded their money back. Scenically, these plays of ours were very elaborate. They were always in four acts and frequently with as many as five scenes in each act. CHINATOWN CHARLIE had twenty-two scenes. The mechanical dexterity demanded in writing a play of this kind was very important and an extremely difficult trick to acquire. Front scenes in the old melodramas were always flat and stupid, just as they are in the musical comedies of to-day. The expert workman let his front scenes run the exact time it took the stage carpenters to set the next scene back of it and not a moment longer, which took experience and care. It was also necessary to climax these scenes and these scene climaxes were the forerunners of the modern “blackout”—some sure-fire “belly-laugh” or bit of heroic bunk that would be sure to bring a yell of delight from the audience to cover the moment in the dark necessary to fly the drop and start the next scene. After a time I got to be so expert in this that I could give a cue to the audience for a laugh or a yell of approval that would last just long enough to fill in the desired pause. To me the most interesting thing about these old manuscripts of mine are these “audience cues” that would be meaningless to any one who should chance to read them but were a very real and very necessary part of the play.