I’m told it has been a great success. If success is measured by the quantities of people who visit it, then “Yes”--the critics have certainly been splendid to me. For the rest, if I have any complaint to make, it is due, I suppose, to the “slump” that I am told prevails. A slump is prosperity compared to Europe, and I have not been here in normal times, so can make no comparison. I feel rather with the policeman in the Avenue, Dick’s friend, who said to Louise, “Look at them! Look at them!” pointing at the motors, “all day long they pass back and forth. Gee! How rich people must be, no wonder the world comes and asks us for relief funds--!” I dined with Kenneth Durant and Ernestine Evans, Crystal Eastman and a young Art critic from Boston. We went afterwards to see “Emperor Jones.” This is practically a one man play, and its success is due to the genius of Gilpin, the colored actor. It is a grim and powerful representation, that the “grand Guignol” might well produce. The only thing is that it deals so entirely with the psychology of the colored race that no European would quite understand it. I would have lost a lot of it if Kenneth hadn’t explained here and there. I see the negro in a new light. He used to be rather repulsive to me, but obviously he is human, has been very badly treated, and suffers probably a good deal from the terrific race prejudice that prevails here. It must be humiliating to an educated colored man, that he may not walk down the street with a white woman, nor dine in a restaurant with her. I wonder about the psychology of the colored man, like the poet, Mackaye, who came to see me a few days ago and who is as delightful to talk to as any man one could meet. In this play the civilized negro adventurer, who has established himself Emperor of an island, has to fly to the woods in the face of a rebellion. He grows weak from hunger, and finally, overcome by superstitious fears, goes slowly mad, and scene after scene in which he is practically alone on the stage, shows the man going back further and further towards his origin. It is terribly interesting, and at the end I felt the colored actor had scored a triumph, and that the white audience could not be feeling very proud. FRIDAY, APRIL 8, 1921.