Not so long ago I was present at the first performance of a play, and during its presentation I was shocked beyond my power to describe by an incident at the same time disgusting and inconceivably vulgar. The play itself—a wearisome thing—was crude and altogether impossible.

At the end of the second act, a half dozen paid ushers applauded valiantly. Before they could become wearied by their difficult task, a huge, bulky man appeared before the curtain. He ambled slowly to the center of the stage where he stood still for perhaps fifteen seconds as if to enable the audience to contemplate him in repose.

Then this individual shifted his weight from one leg to the other, still keeping silent. There he stood, a sneer distorting his features, poised on one leg, the left foot pointing toward the right. He wore an ill-fitting evening suit with an abundance of shirt front, very much mussed, protruding from the confines of the waistcoat. His face, unwashed, suggested a cross between a Bill Sykes and a Caliban. Oblique, thin slits concealed a pair of green-white eyes. A strong, wide jaw that opened and shut like the snap of an alligator's was tilted forward and upward at the puzzled spectators.

Finally the person, the author of the drivel we had patiently listened to, leaned over the footlights and casting a look toward the woman for whom he had deserted home, wife and children, literally snarled at the audience.

"I wrote this play for the elect," he declared ferociously.

A perceptible shudder ran through the house. Many men and women rose from their seats and left the theatre, refusing to remain to hear the incoherent and egotistical remarks of this revolting person.

I have known this brute for twenty years, and in all that time I have never heard one human being speak anything except ill of him. Managers avoid him. Artists loathe him. Authors despise him. A moral and physical coward, this man without a friend, wanders from East to West, vulgarly attempting to foist upon a long-suffering and all-too-easily deceived public, the woman whose chief claim to public notice is the fact that she was named as co-respondent in the divorce action obtained by his wife.

He continues to write plays of the underworld with inspirations obtained in the sewers of humanity and founded on ideas purloined from departed authors or stolen from the living too weak to protect themselves.

His blustering, bullying tactics have enabled him to push his way upwards to some success—but no one envies him. All who know him "have his number."

I have often wondered how he has escaped bodily injury. No woman is safe from his insults. I know one young woman who went to him in search of an engagement. His first question was so dastardly as to cause her to burst into tears, and she ran from his presence in hysterics. When this young woman's uncle learned of it he loaded a revolver and started on this playwright's track. But the tears and entreaties of his wife and his niece stopped him.

Will the world ever be rid of this form of human parasite?

I wonder.

The antithesis of this person is another author equally despised. He is a little, pale person who writes problem plays and has met with much success. He never drinks or smokes. In fact he poses as a paragon of all the virtues.

He once wrote me an insulting letter accusing me of uttering profane remarks concerning a certain business transaction between us. I never answered it, but have it in my possession. It may prove useful some day.

This beauty, who also has a wife and children, came West some few years ago accompanied by a woman whom he introduced to many persons as his wife. I knew she was not, but kept my counsel. One day we were discussing a play which he had promised to write for me. I asked him why he did not divorce his wife or insist on her divorcing him. He blandly replied: "Great Scott, I've tried everything to induce her to do so, but she doesn't believe in divorce. Besides, she is a Christian."

Fancy this pious little man saying this.

He goes merrily on his way, living a dual life—the woman of his easy choice provided for far better than his wife and children. And he writes plays dealing with moral problems! He receives very large royalties and basks in the sunshine of his own hypocrisy.

And this individual has had the audacity to criticise my actions and elect himself the censor of my various attitudes.

Well, let him. I would not exchange my conscience for his for all his affluence. And yet, from his point of view, he is right. The world applauds his plays. No one seems to interfere with his private affairs. He is received by all his fellow club members with impersonal respect. The wide white way is always open to him and the woman. There no one ever pushes them aside. The legal wife and children are unknown to cruel, gay Broadway. The narrow paths of the meadows and lanes of the suburban retreat in which this successful author has his family housed are their only byways. Through them they slowly tread—to the little church and beyond it to the graveyard, towards which the wife and mother ever sets her gaze—as if in prayerful hope.

And the author of successful plays is content.

He knows his wife is a Christian.

What is he?

I wonder.

I would rather sell fresh eggs from the end of my private car in one-night stands—than barter impure ones on the stage of a leading New York playhouse.

An agnostic objects to salaries for draped preachers and to temples whose roofs prohibit thought from permeating the realm of inspiration.

Fact is the whiplash that scourges faith.

Chapter LXXXIII