" It was signed
"Julia Marlowe." Mr. Major felt that this was enough for one morning,
so he escaped to Indianapolis, and after a talk with his publishers,
left for St. Louis and answered Miss Marlowe's telegram in person. At
the first interview she was enthusiastic and he was confident. She
gave him a box for the next night's performance, which Miss Marlowe
arranged should be "As You Like It." After the play the author was
enthusiastic and the actress confident.
At Cincinnati, the following week, the contract was signed and the
search for the dramatist was begun. That the story would lend itself
happily to stage production must have occurred even to the thoughtless
reader. But it is one thing to see the scenes of a play fairly
sticking out, as the saying is, from the pages of a book, and quite
another to gather together and make of them a dramatic entity. Miss
Marlowe was determined that the book should be given to a playwright
whose dramatic experience and artistic sense could be relied on to
lead him out of the rough places, up to the high plane of convincing
and finished workmanship.
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