Frohman it is jealousy: Daniel Frohman resents not being able to get my plays for nothing: with the Syndicate it is because they feared I was getting a little too strong for them. But you knew me as a boy--in fact, we were boys together--and no one in the world knows better than you how I can struggle with privation and adversity. I shall never surrender to this crowd: _never_--not even if I am obliged to return to ’Frisco and do chores about a theatre as you saw me do in the long, long ago. “Well, I have written more than I intended to, telling you my troubles, but I shall make it a rule to send you a line now and then and let you know all the good and cheerful news of the East. I would give a finger to be able to drop in on you at this moment for a cup of coffee and a piece of pie in the little old restaurant, if it is still in existence, and to have an old-time heart-to-heart talk. But I hope it won’t be very long before I can do this. Hurrah! God bless you! “Faithfully, “DAVID BELASCO.” (_Peter Robertson to David Belasco, in New York._) “Bohemian Club, San Francisco, Calif., “May 9, 1904. “My dear Dave:-- “I shall smoke the cigars to your continued success. I was glad to hear from you; but I don’t sympathize in the least with your suffering from hard work. I did sympathize much more with you in the days when you worked,--often quite as hard and got no salary!--‘faking’ plays for Maguire, at the Baldwin. You would never be happy, anyway, if you hadn’t your head full of schemes, and were not constantly producing. Your work has achieved a great success, and work that has success behind it and success before it is life at its best. There is nothing so hard as work that has failure to pull it backward and the prospect of failure to push it back. “_I_, too, think of the old days of coffee and cake; they were pleasant, after all; if I had lived much beyond them since they would still be pleasant to recall. However, my life goes on in its even tenor, and I make myself as comfortable as possible, though I do feel something like an old, worn-out hack--so many years I have gone the same old round. Still, I have not quite given up hope of better fortune. “Go on and make your name and fortune greater than ever, and don’t work yourself up over any Syndicates. They need you more than you do them.--My regards to Mrs. Belasco and the family, and Fred and Price. “Always yours, “PETER.”