I was ashamed to tell her how I "earned" the money, but I wouldn't tell her a falsehood and finally told her of my afternoon's experience. This worried her greatly as she never believed that any good results came from money obtained that way. I assuaged her grief and as usual was forgiven. We spent that night pondering over the manuscript and at the finish we both decided it was vastly inferior to our little play "Cruets." However, we announced a production for Friday night. This gave us only five days of preparation. We thought so little of it that we never gave any attention as to what we should wear, arriving at no definite conclusion until the night of the performance. So little did we think of the play that I offered Charles Bowser, my leading comedian, a half interest in it for five hundred dollars and a cancellation of the three hundred and fifty dollars I owed him for back salary. "Natty," he said, "I haven't five hundred dollars and even if I had I wouldn't care to invest it in your property." How little did he know he was refusing a fortune! When the curtain rang down on the finale of that play I would not have sold a half interest in it for fifty thousand dollars! It was a whirlwind of laughter from beginning to end. We were all dumbfounded and could not understand why the play was received with such manifestations of delight. Everything was encored time and time again and the rafters shook with applause and laughter. The Saturday morning papers were most enthusiastic and in a few days I was besieged with offers from all over the country. We performed this play successfully for four years, Eliza and I dividing a small fortune. Hers was put away in the safe deposit vault while most of mine went back into the coffers of the proprietors of various places of the same kind as that in which I won the original thousand dollars. I really never knew how much we did make out of that play until Eliza died and willed me her share. It came in very handy at the time and was gratifying for two reasons--it eliminated all my debts and was a vindication for me, in a way, as I considered it proof that (since she left me every dollar she possessed, with the exception of the ten thousand dollars in bonds which she had earned before our marriage) I had not treated her as cruelly as my vilifiers would have the world believe. We followed "Hobbies" with several other productions including "The Member for Slocum," "Sparks," "Ourselves," "The Ramblers" and one or two others. Then we associated ourselves with Edwin F. Thorne and produced a melodrama by Henry Pettit called "The Black Flag." I appeared as Sim Lazarus and Eliza as Ned the waif. We produced this play at the Union Square Theatre in September, 1882, and continued through that theatrical season with very gratifying success.