"Can it be true," I thought, "that I have actually sold a play to this famous manager?" In a moment my simple old ambitions burst like a Roman candle into innumerable bright stars. I had been content hitherto with the prospect of some fame, a thousand a year, and a few modest luxuries. But I knew what the earnings of successful dramatists were. My thousand increased tenfold; my mind dwelt on all the complex sybaritism of European capitals; and I saw how I could make use of the unequalled advertisement of theatrical renown to find a ready market for the most artistic fiction that I was capable of writing. This new scheme of things sprang into my brain instantaneously, full-grown. I left the theatre an accepted dramatist. It never rains but it pours. My kind manager mentioned our stylistic drawing-room melodrama to another manager with such laudation that the second manager was eager to see it. Having seen it, he was eager to buy it. He gave us a hundred down to finish it in three months, and when we had finished it he sealed a contract for production with another cheque for a hundred. At the same period, through the mediation of the friend who had first introduced me to this world where hundreds were thrown about like fivers, I was commissioned by the most powerful theatrical manager on earth to assist in the dramatization of a successful novel; and this led to another commission of a similar nature, on more remunerative terms. Then a certain management telegraphed for me (in the theatre all business is done by telegraph and cable), and offered me a commission to compress a five-act Old English comedy into three acts. "We might have offered this to So-and-So or So-and-So," they said, designating persons of importance. "But we preferred to come to you." "I assume my name is to appear?" I said. But my name was not to appear, and I begged to be allowed to decline the work. I suddenly found myself on terms of familiarity with some of the great ones of the stage. I found myself invited into the Garrick Club, and into the more Bohemian atmosphere of the Green Room Club. I became accustomed to hearing the phrase: "You are the dramatist of the future." One afternoon I was walking down Bedford Street when a hand was placed on my shoulder, and a voice noted for its rich and beautiful quality exclaimed: "How the d----l are you, my dear chap?" The speaker bears a name famous throughout the English-speaking world. "You are arriving!" I said to myself, naïvely proud of this greeting. I had always understood that the theatrical "ring" was impenetrable to an outsider; and yet I had stepped into the very middle of it without the least trouble. My collaborator and I then wrote a farce. "We can't expect to sell everything," I said to him warningly, but I sold it quite easily. Indeed I sold it, repurchased it, and sold it again, within the space of three months. Reasons of discretion prevent me from carrying my theatrical record beyond this point.