While Belasco was in San Francisco he witnessed several performances of a play called “The First Born,” written by Francis Powers, which had been produced, May 10, under the management of his brother, Frederick Belasco, at the Alcazar Theatre, and he was so favorably impressed with its merits that he arranged to present that drama,--which ran for ten weeks in San Francisco,--in New York, in association with Charles Frohman. That arrangement was successfully consummated, at the Manhattan (previously the Standard) Theatre, October 5, 1897. “The First Born” is a tragic sketch of character and life in the Chinese quarter of old San Francisco,--a region with which the acquaintance of Belasco was peculiarly intimate and exact and one of which the mingled squalor and romance had always strongly attracted him. The posture of circumstances and experience depicted in that play is simple and direct. _Man Low Yek_, a rich Chinese merchant, has stolen _Chan Lee_, the wife of _Chan Wang_, also a Chinese and a dweller in the Chinatown. That ravagement _Wang_ has borne with equanimity; but when _Chan Lee_, returning to San Francisco with her paramour, entices _Chan Toy_, their first born and only son, from him and in her endeavor to steal the child accidentally causes his death, the unfortunate _Wang_ becomes at first an image of agonized paternal love and then an embodiment of implacable vengeance. The play is in two acts. In the first, Chinatown is shown in the bright light and bustle of a busy noonday and against that setting is displayed the sudden bereavement and afflicting anguish of the father. In the second, an alley-end in the same district is shown, with a glimpse of contiguous gambling hells and opium dens, under the darkening shadows of evening. There the inexorable avenger lounges, leaning against a door post,--apparently an idler smoking his evening pipe and talking with a Chinese girl, who leans from a window; in fact, vigilantly observant of _Man Low Yek_, visible within a shop, and intent on slaying him. The alley grows dark and becomes deserted. The neighboring houses are illumined. The chink of money and the bickering chatter of unseen gamblers are heard. A police officer saunters by and disappears. _Man Low Yek_ comes forth from his shop, closing it after him. Then, suddenly, as he passes, _Wang_, with fearful celerity, leaps upon him wielding a hatchet, strikes him down, drags the dead body into convenient concealment, and is back again at his former loitering place, outwardly placid, before the fire in his pipe has had time to become extinguished.