The picture was “The Golden Supper,” taken from Tennyson’s “Lover’s Tale.” I arrived just in time for the Princess’s royal funeral. Down the majestic stairway of the Commodore’s palatial home, the cortège took its way, escorting on a flower-bedecked stretcher, in all her pallid beauty, the earthly remains of the dead little princess. Now in the movies, if anywhere, a princess must be beautiful. I knew not who was playing this fair royal child until the actors put the bier down, and the princess sat up, when I was quite dumbfounded to see our own little Dorothy West come to life. Dorothy had done nicely times before as a little child of the ghetto and as frail Italian maids of the peasant class, and now here she was a full-fledged princess. So, in my amazement, I said to my husband, for it was a sincere, impersonal interest in the matter that I felt: “Is Dorothy West playing the Princess? Aren’t you taking a chance?” With great assurance he answered, “Oh, with the photography we now have, I can make them all beautiful.” Next day, as the lovely Shenandoah Valley spread out before me, I kept hearing those startling words, “Oh, with the photography we now have, I can make them all beautiful.” “The Mended Lute” was perhaps the first picture produced with the inspiring background of Cuddebackville scenery. Florence Lawrence, Owen Moore, and Jim Kirkwood the leading actors. David wrote me to Louisville on his return to New York: DEAR LINDA: Well, I am back in New York. Got back at twelve o’clock last night.... I have accounts to make out for eight days, imagine that job, can you? Haven’t had my talk with Mr. Kennedy as yet, as I have been away, but expect to on Tuesday or Wednesday as soon as I can see him. Lost six pounds up in the country, hard work, if you please.... And then I want to go back to that place again and take you this time because it’s very fine up there. I am saving a great automobile ride for you--if I stay.... “If I stay”--always that “if.” A year had now rolled by and in August Mr. Griffith would sign his second contract--_if_ he stayed. The hegira to Cuddebackville had been undertaken to show Biograph officials what could be done by just forgetting the old stamping grounds adjacent to Fort Lee. Contract-signing time approaching, Mr. Griffith wanted to splurge. A number of scripts had collected that called for wild mountainous country, among them “The Mended Lute.” Mr. Kennedy and our secretary, Mr. R. H. Hammer; Mr. Griffith and his photographer, Mr. Bitzer, sitting in conference had decided upon a place up in the Orange Mountains called Cuddebackville. It had scenic possibilities, housing facilities, and lacked summer boarders. Through an engineering job--the construction of a dam at one end of the old D. L. and W. Canal, on whose placid waters in days gone by the elder Vanderbilt had towed coal to New York--Mr. Kennedy had become acquainted with Cuddebackville.