the country, it was prosperously presented. “LORD CHUMLEY” AND E. H. SOTHERN. During the early part of 1888 Belasco did some work as a teacher of acting, bestowing, at the request of Daniel Frohman, special attention on instruction of Mrs. James G. Blaine, Jr. (Mary Nevin), a person of social influence--and therefore potentially valuable to the management of the Lyceum Theatre--whose aspirations for a theatrical career were terminated by serious illness. Toward Spring the necessity of executing the commission to write a new play for the use of Sothern, at the Lyceum, compelled Belasco to lay aside all other labor, and, about March-April, in company with De Mille, he repaired to Echo Lake, and there, after trying and rejecting many dramatic schemes, the co-mates in authorship finally hit upon one to their liking. By about July 1 (1888) they had practically completed a new play, entitled “Lord Chumley,” and they returned to New York in order that Belasco might put it into rehearsal. In doing this he had to confront an unexpected difficulty: Sothern, who had expressed himself as satisfied on reading the scenario of the play, did not like the part of _Chumley_ in the finished work and, as Mr. Frohman informed the disgruntled authors, was averse to undertaking it. Belasco writes of this: “‘But the character’s Sothern,’ I said; ’every look, gesture, and exclamation fits him like a glove!’... Of course, it was the old story all over again; an actor never knows what is best suited to him.” The latter notion is, I think, extravagant: for every instance wherein an actor has made a notable success in playing a part against his judgment and will a dozen could be cited wherein the actor has known his powers and made his distinctive success by following his own judgment in selection of the part to be played. “You are mistaken,” Charles Burke told a friend, who had exclaimed to him, in a burst of admiration, “You don’t know what a good actor you are!”, “I know _exactly_ what a good actor I am, and _exactly_ what I can do on the stage.” Sothern, as his later career has shown, cherished ambition to act parts of a very different character from _Chumley_, but, fortunately for all concerned, he consented to undertake that part, after Belasco had expounded it to him; the rehearsals were carried on with diligence and, on August 21, 1888, “Lord Chumley” was produced, for the first time anywhere, at the Lyceum Theatre.