Back to the dingy “A. B.” for us. Strange, even from the beginning we felt a sort of at-home feeling there. The casualness of the place made a strong appeal. What would happen if some one really got on the job down there some day? And so it came about shortly after “The Snow-man” that the elder Mr. McCutcheon fell ill, and his son Wallace took over his job. He directed “When Knights Were Bold”; directed Mr. Griffith in several pictures. But Wally was not ambitious to make the movies his life job. He soon made a successful début in musical comedy. Some years later he married Pearl White, the popular movie star. It began to look as though there soon might be a new director about the place. And there was. There were several. No offer of theatrical jobs came to disrupt the even tenor of the first two months at Biograph. It was too late for winter productions and too early for summer stock, so there was nothing to worry about, until with the first hint of summer in the air, my husband received an offer to go to Peake’s Island, Maine, and play villains in a summer stock company there. Forty per, the salary would be, sometimes more and sometimes less than our combined earnings at the studio. To go or not to go? Summer stock might last the summer and might not. Three months was the most to expect. The Biograph might do as much for us. How trivial it all sounds now! Ah, but believe me, it was nothing to be taken lightly then. For a decision that affects one’s very bread and butter, when bread and butter has been so uncertain, one doesn’t make without heart searchings and long councils of war. So we argued, in a friendly way. Said he: “If I turn this job down, and appear to be so busy, they soon won’t send for me at all. Of course, if this movie thing is going to last and amount to anything, if anybody could tell you anything about it, we could afford to take chances. In one way it is very nice. You can stay in New York, and _if_ I can find time to write too--fine! But you know you can’t go on forever and not tell your friends and relatives how you are earning your living.” Then said she: “How long is Peake’s Island going to last? What’s sure about summer stock? What does Peake’s Island mean to David Belasco or Charles Frohman? We’ve got this little flat here, with our very own twenty dollars’ worth of second-hand furniture, and the rent’s so low--twenty. You don’t know what’s going to happen down at the Biograph, you might get to direct some day. Let’s stick the summer out anyhow, and when fall comes and productions open up again, we’ll see, huh?” So we put Peake’s Island behind us. Now it is as sure as shooting, _if_ “Lawrence” Griffith had accepted the offer to play stock that summer he never would have become the David W. Griffith of the movies. Had he stepped out then, some one else surely would have stepped in and filled his little place; and the chances are he would never have gone back to those queer movies.