When Raymond indulged in tricks of this sort he displayed a lack of respect alike for his audience and for his art. The art had to suffer in silence; but the audience might at any time be moved to protest. I recall that when Raymond was playing Ichabod Crane in 1879 he sent me a box, to which my wife invited three or four of her young friends. In the last act Ichabod comes out into the garden to ask Katrina into the house, where there was merrymaking. To the startled astonishment of our party, Raymond said “Come on in, Katrina! There’s lots of fun! Brander Matthews has brought a whole boxful of pretty girls!”—a speech which nobody in the house—except the boxful—seemed to hear or at least to apprehend, probably because it had no relation to the story being acted on the stage. None the less was Raymond an accomplished comedian, brisk, lively, laughter-compelling and authoritative. Like many another comic actor, he longed to play pathetic parts; and unlike most of those who have this ambition, he did possess the power of drawing tears. I had first seen him as Asa Trenchard in Paris during the Exposition of 1867, when Sothern had ventured across the Channel to disclose Lord Dundreary to the unresponsive French; and I have never forgotten the simple and manly pathos of the scene in which Asa burns the will leaving him the fortune which would otherwise go to the girl he is in love with. Audiences are always ready to appreciate a brief pathetic episode when the comic character unexpectedly turns his serious side to the spectators. But they are resentful when the funny man whom they have gone to laugh with, and even to laugh at, is presented in a play wherein he is persistently pathetic and not even intermittently humorous. Raymond lost money for himself and for his managers when he impersonated a dreary sobseeker in a dull domestic drama, ‘My Son,’ derived from a tearful Teutonic tale of woe. In collaboration with H. C. Bunner I put together a rather boisterous farce called ‘Touch and Go,’ which Raymond liked enough to contract to produce but not enough for him ever to set about its production. In its place he had brought out in succession two plays in which the fun was less acrobatic—‘In Paradise’ and ‘For Congress.’ After these pieces had run their course, G. H. Jessop (who was a part author of ‘In Paradise’) came to me with an idea for a comic drama for Raymond and asked me to join him in working it out. It was to be called ‘A Gold Mine’; and having in mind Raymond’s Asa Trenchard in the ‘American Cousin,’ I suggested that we lay the scene in London, so as to repeat the contrast of an American with the British. We also decided to develop our plot so that at the end of the second of our three acts Raymond should have a chance to be pathetic if only for a brief moment.