My new system is, I believe, a great step toward the perfection of stage illumination. By means of it footlights, in my opinion, are made unnecessary for any play, and they are no longer a part of the illumination of my stage. All the light comes from above, as in nature; but in order to accomplish this I built an entirely new proscenium arch. A great iron hood, following the lines of the stage, hangs behind the proscenium. The hood contains lights of varying power, and by means of reflectors, invented and manufactured in my own shop, the illumination is diffused without casting shadows. The glare of the footlights is a thing of the past so far as I am concerned. My stage was also reconstructed so as to extend out into the auditorium over the orchestra pit. These changes bring the audience into more intimate touch with the scene on the stage.” OPENING OF BELASCO’S STUYVESANT THEATRE:--“A GRAND ARMY MAN.” Belasco opened his Stuyvesant Theatre, October 16, 1907, with a play entitled “A Grand Army Man,” written by himself in collaboration with Miss Pauline Phelps and Miss Marion Short,--that is, rewritten and made practical by Belasco, working on the basis of an amateur essay in dramatic authorship provided by those ladies. That play was first acted on any stage at the Hyperion Theatre, New Haven, Connecticut, September 23, the same year. It presents neither surprising ingenuity of construction nor uncommon felicity of style, but it tells a plain story in a plain way. The chord that is struck in it is that of romantic, almost paternal, altogether manly and beautiful affection. As a work of dramatic art it appertains to the class of comedies represented by such plays as “Grandfather Whitehead,” “The Porter’s Knot,” and “The Chimney Corner,”--plays in which the theme involves unselfish love and the sentiments and emotions that cling to the idea of Home. In that respect it reverts to a style of drama once, fortunately, dominant--at a time when the American Stage was illumined and adorned by such actors as Henry Placide, John Gilbert, John Nickinson, Charles W. Couldock, William Warren, and Mark Smith. The authors of it provided Warfield with a vehicle of dramatic expression that exactly conformed to the bent of his mind. The plot is simple, but by reason of being natural and being fraught with true, as opposed to false, emotion, its simplicity nowhere declines into insipid commonplace. The chief character, _Wes’ Bigelow_, is a veteran of the Grand Army of the Republic. He has never married. In youth he has loved a girl, but has not won her, and she has become the wife of one of his comrades. Years have passed, and the American Civil War has occurred. That comrade has been slain in battle. The widow has died: but she has left a child, that comrade’s boy, and _Bigelow_ has adopted and reared him. The substance of the play is his experience with the fortunes of that ward.