Produced by Tim Lindell, David E. Brown, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.) ICEBOUND By Owen Davis THE DETOUR ICEBOUND ICEBOUND _A Play_ BY OWEN DAVIS [Illustration] BOSTON LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 1923 _Copyright, 1922, 1923_, BY OWEN DAVIS. _All rights reserved_ Published July, 1923 No performance of this play, professional or amateur,--or public reading of it--may be given without the written permission of the author and the payment of royalty. Application for the rights of performing “Icebound” must be made to Sam H. Harris, Sam H. Harris Theatre, New York City. PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA FOREWORD With the production of “The Detour,” about a year ago, I managed to secure some measure of success in drawing a simple picture of life as it is lived on a Long Island farm; encouraged by this, I am now turning toward my own people, the people of northern New England, whose folklore, up to the present time, has been quite neglected in our theatre. I mean, of course, that few serious attempts have been made in the direction of a genre comedy of this locality. Here I have at least tried to draw a true picture of these people, and I am of their blood, born of generations of Northern Maine, small-town folk, and brought up among them. In my memory of them is little of the “Rube” caricature of the conventional theatre; they are neither buffoons nor sentimentalists, and at least neither their faults nor their virtues are borrowed from the melting pot but are the direct result of their own heritage and environment. OWEN DAVIS. 1923. ICEBOUND “Icebound” was originally produced in New York, February 10, 1923, with the following cast: HENRY JORDAN _John Westley_ EMMA, his wife _Lotta Linthicum_ NETTIE, her daughter by a former marriage _Boots Wooster_ SADIE FELLOWS, once Sadie Jordan, a widow _Eva Condon_ ORIN, her son _Andrew J. Lawlor, Jr._ ELLA JORDAN, the unmarried sister _Frances Neilson_ DOCTOR CURTIS _Lawrence Eddinger_ JANE CROSBY, a second cousin of the Jordans _Phyllis Povah_ JUDGE BRADFORD _Willard Robertson_ BEN JORDAN _Robert Ames_ HANNAH _Edna May Oliver_ JIM JAY _Charles Henderson_ ACT ONE. THE PARLOR OF THE JORDAN HOMESTEAD, 4 P.M., October, 1922. ACT TWO. THE SITTING ROOM OF THE JORDAN HOMESTEAD, Two months later. Afternoon. ACT THREE.