It must have been somewhere about this period that the first impetus was, funnily enough, given to Joe’s dramatic career by a request from our dear friend, Ellen Terry, that I should make an English adaptation for her from the famous French play of _Frou-Frou_. The thing was done, and played in Glasgow and other Northern towns under the title of _Butterfly_, and great fun we had over our first initiation into the mysteries of dress-rehearsals--not always perhaps quite so funny in the more responsible circumstances of later years, though it is a form of patient work electrified by the gambling spirit, which never lost its attraction for Joe. My altered version of the French play was a poor one, but it had, I suppose, sufficient merit to obtain me a commission from Mme. Modjeska, the noted Polish actress, for a free translation of the same play, which she performed first in London with Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson and afterwards throughout the United States. The “youthful conceit” to which Joe was throughout his life so lenient as even to consider a virtue, led me presently to try my hand at a bigger task--no less than the dramatisation of Thomas Hardy’s _Far from the Madding Crowd_. I was quite unequal to the attempt, and I only mention it because it proved the beginning of Joe’s dramatic work. He took the play in hand, refashioned the plot, only keeping portions of the dialogue as I had adapted it to stage necessity; and it was produced--with Marion Terry as the wilful and charming Bathsheba--first in the provinces and then in London. Owing to circumstances needless to recall, the venture was a financial failure; but it served to start Joe on a new road; and it was not long before he scored a big success. He came home one night from a railway journey and gave me a little book which he had bought to read in the train: it was _Called Back_ by Hugh Conway. “See if you don’t think that an enthralling story?” he said. There could be no doubt of this and the British public gave its verdict promptly. The book began to sell like “hot cakes” and Joe went down to Clifton, saw its clever author--until then unknown to literature--and arranged with him for its dramatisation. The play was produced on May 20th, 1884, and I think there are still people who remember its first success and that, in the rôle of the Italian conspirator--Macari--Sir Herbert Tree scored one of his finest early triumphs; the piece was revived several times in London and the provinces and had the questionable compliment of being also pirated. But I shall not easily forget the dress-rehearsal!