The piece was admirably rendered to an audience of some thirty immortal souls--of course very sympathetic immortal souls. My feelings, as the situation which I had invented gradually developed into something alive on that tiny make-shift stage, were peculiar and, in a way, alarming. Every one who has driven a motor-car knows the uncanny sensation that ensues when for the first time in your life you pull the starting lever, and the Thing beneath you begins mysteriously and formidably to move. It is at once an astonishment, a terror, and a delight. I felt like that as I watched the progress of my first play. It was as though I had unwittingly liberated an energy greater than I knew, actually created something vital. This illusion of physical vitality is the exclusive possession of the dramatist; the novelist, the poet, cannot share it. The play was a delicious success. People laughed so much that some of my most subtle jocosities were drowned in the appreciative cachinnation. The final applause was memorable, at any rate to me. No mere good-nature can simulate the unique ring of genuine applause, and this applause was genuine. It was a microscopic triumph for me, but it was a triumph. Every one said to me: "But you are a dramatist!" "Oh, no!" I replied awkwardly; "this trifle is really nothing." But the still small voice of my vigorous self-confidence said: "Yes, you are, and you ought to have found it out years ago!" Among my audience was a publisher. He invited me to write for him a little book of one-act farces for amateurs; his terms were agreeable. I wrote three such farces, giving two days to each, and the volume was duly published; no book of mine has cost me less trouble. The reviews of it were lavish in praise of my "unfailing wit"; the circulation was mediocre. I was asked by companies of amateur actors up and down the country to assist at rehearsals of these pieces; but I could never find the energy to comply, save once. I hankered after the professional stage. By this time I could see that I was bound to enter seriously into the manufacture of stage-plays. My readers will have observed that once again in my history the inducement to embark for a fresh port had been quite external and adventitious.