It was an opinion of the philosophic Bacon that women “will sooner follow you by slighting than by too much wooing.” That is an opinion shared by many and one which observation perceives to be grounded on fact: _some_ women _will_. It is the basic idea underlying the play by Messrs. Winchell Smith and Victor Mapes, called “The Boomerang,” which Belasco produced at his New York theatre, August 10, 1915,--and which, slender as it is, has proved one of the most richly remunerative of all his ventures. In that play a youth, _Budd Woodbridge_ by name, loves a girl, _Grace Tyler_, so unreservedly that she finds him wearisome and is inclined to repel his devotion and bestow her affections upon another youth. Young _Woodbridge_ so peaks and pines under his mistress’ disdain and the pangs of juvenile jealousy that his mother fears that he is passing into a decline and insists on his consulting a physician. That physician, _Dr. Gerald Sumner_, finds the young man depressed, irritable, and in extreme nervous distress. He questions him shrewdly and soon ascertains the nature of the distemper for which he is desired to prescribe. He rather cynically undertakes to cure the youth and his directions are obeyed. His patient is sent home and put to bed; a daily hypodermic injection is ordered of a mysterious, vivifying serum (in fact, water), and a young woman nurse, beautiful and peculiarly kind and sympathetic, is employed to administer the injection and to amuse and cheer the unhappy sufferer, who is obediently responsive to her angelic ministration. The capricious _Miss Tyler_, seeing her adorer apparently succumbing to the fascinations of the lovely nurse and finding herself rather slighted off, discovers that she cannot live without him and _Woodbridge’s_ amatory anguish is soon in a fair way to be assuaged. The relevancy of the title of this farce, “The Boomerang,” is revealed in a dictionary comment on that implement of Antipodal warfare which declares that: “in inexperienced hands the boomerang recoils upon the thrower, sometimes with very serious results.” This is illustrated by the fate of _Dr. Sumner_, who, having been scornful on the subject of love and jealousy, becomes violently enamoured of the charming nurse and for a time suffers much because of her affectionate tendance upon his patient,--until, at last, he learns that her regard is really fixed upon himself.