I thought these things in the time of which I am now writing, 1912-1913, but naturally I had neither the independence of age nor circumstance at that time to dare to fully express myself. Just before the war I had begun to be impatient of the machine-made plays I had been writing for so long and began to listen to my wife’s pleadings to cut down the quantity and try to improve the quality of my work. She had been begging me to do this for ten years or more, and like other good husbands I rather like to do any little thing my wife asks of me—after she has been asking it for ten years. I really think I wanted to please her, but I also think that I had by this time outgrown the sentimental comedy-drama as once before I had outgrown the cheap melodramas. Naturally enough as soon as I lost my own belief in my form of expression I was no longer successful in it. Let no man go unchallenged who in your presence talks of purposely “writing down” to an audience, or of “giving them what they want” or any other fish-bait of that description. I am here to tell you that no man ever successfully wrote or produced any play, or any novel below his own mental level at the moment. When I wrote NELLIE, THE BEAUTIFUL CLOAK MODEL, I was honestly deeply moved by the lady’s many misfortunes or I couldn’t have put it over, and when I wrote the comedy-dramas that followed it I truly believed in them or no audience in the world would have sat through them. This is always true, I think, of writers or of managers. We are entirely emotional people and our work reflects us. I know of several supremely successful producers who made great fortunes selling the piffle they loved and who, as soon as their money brought them contacts that resulted in an increase in their taste and knowledge promptly appointed themselves judges of the drama and even more promptly went broke. You may well afford to laugh at the faker who boasts of skill great enough to assume a mood and color different from his own. The next time he tells you of how he “wrote down to the boobs” simply tell him he is either a liar or a fool—probably both. For surely, if he is not a liar, he must be the greatest fool on earth to use for a cheap success a genius great enough to have brought him a real one. [Illustration: _Faithfully yours, J. Jefferson_ (_From the Messmore Kendall Collection_) ] [Illustration: “I have always admired Augustus Thomas” (_From the Messmore Kendall Collection_) ]