During the years I have been going to the theater I have seen some thrilling first nights, but I have never really been one of the regulars, as nowadays if one were to try to be present every time a new play opened there would be very little time for anything else. I recall distinctly some of the great nights when I have been present, such as the first performance of THE FORTUNE HUNTER, ON TRIAL, RAIN, WHAT PRICE GLORY, BROADWAY, BURLESQUE, COQUETTE and many more where a wave of enthusiastic cheering swept the play into instantaneous success. We of the theater, I think, when we watch these first nights with an anxious eye, are apt to forget that the reason a play goes over with a bang is because it is a good play, or a novel play, or the sort of play that at that moment is the play the public wants and the play makes the first night enthusiasm. The first night enthusiasm doesn’t make the play. My years of almost frantic application to my work had by now resulted in a fixed habit and I found myself pounding along at top speed long after the necessity for such effort had disappeared. It is the literal truth to say that for more than thirty years there has been no time in which I have not had a play in some stage of its progress on my desk and in response to long training, my mind continually drops automatically into retrospective revery entirely without conscious direction on my part. I was not satisfied with the work I was turning out and decided to make an effort to take life more easily than had been my habit. I remember getting quite a thrill out of this evidence of my sanity and prudence. I had not fully realized how fixed the habits of a lifetime may become and soon discovered how impossible it was for me to hope to reform. Before I admitted defeat, however, I made really quite an honest effort and forced myself to take part in several of the semi-social and semi-political activities of the theater. I had always refused any demands upon my time not connected either with my own work or with the affairs of the Dramatists’ Guild or the Authors’ League, but I now turned deliberately to these rather remote outlets for my energy. For the first time in my life I tried to make myself believe that it is as important to talk about work as it is to do the work itself, an error of judgment on my part from which my sense of humor rescued me before I had gone very far. The most interesting of these activities was the attempt to establish a National Theatre as it was called, and although the plan failed, I have always thought the failure was unnecessary. The committee to organize this National Theatre was selected from the best men of the theater, the fine arts departments of the leading eastern universities and the leading social and financial groups of New York. We were to produce one play a year with special attention to manners and diction and show this play at moderate prices in all of the larger cities of the country.