With this lifelong habit of swift workmanship upon me, I thought that all I needed was to see my theme before me, and to go at it with my whole heart as I would have done at a new novel. In writing a novel you want a live place and live people; and these being provided, your book is as good as finished when you are half-way through with it. But I shall never forget in what a quagmire I landed myself when I began to write 'Chums' upon this principle. I have always, since I can remember, been a student of the acted drama. I acted for some years as dramatic critic in the provinces and in London. I knew as much about the exigencies of stage construction as the average man, and found that that meant a little less than nothing. The very method of work looked curiously bare and bald. My study for years has been to me a theatre in which I have acted many scores of different parts, often enough before a mirror to assure myself of nature. Yet I no sooner began to write consciously for the stage than this useful faculty abandoned me entirely. I no longer saw my living people; but in their stead the members of the travelling company obtruded themselves upon me. My leading lady was before me in the place of Lucy Draycott. She was and is a most excellent and charming actress; but she was only playing at being Lucy Draycott, and she stood in between me and my own conception in a way which filled me with a cold embarrassment. Then, again, Square Jack Furlong, a rustic rascal, who, as I boldly hoped, was to make quite a new type of stage villain, was to be impersonated by a heavy man of quite the conventional sort--a man who (small blame to him) would have no idea of the accent my scoundrel was to speak in (a vital point to me) and not a conception of the inner workings of his mind. In this way all the real people who supposed they were to interpret my shadows into flesh and blood converted my flesh and blood into shadow. Understand that I am not apologizing for a bad play or a failure. It was not counted either one or the other, though I must do something different to touch the mark I am in quest of. I am only trying to show in what fashion I was embarrassed by new conditions. My travelling manager nearly broke his heart because I would not at first consent to allow my villain to shoot little Harold, and at last in desperation I took his advice and killed an idyll with a single grain of melodrama.