"Have you any new dramatic work in preparation, Paiseley?" asked Kindelon, as the gentleman who had just been mentioned now drew near himself and Pauline.
"Yes," was Mr. Paiseley's reply. He spoke with a nasal tone and without much grammatical punctilio. "I've got a piece on hand that I'm doing for Mattie Molloy. Do you know her at all? She does the song-and-dance business with comedy variations. I think the piece'll be a go; it'll just suit her, I guess."
"Your last melodrama, 'The Brand of Cain,' was very successful, was it not?" pursued Kindelon.
"Well," said Mr. Paiseley, as he threw back an errant lock or two from his great width of swollen-looking forehead, "I'm afraid it isn't going to catch on so very well, after all. The piece is all right, but the company can't play it. Cooke guys his part because he don't like it, and doesn't get a hand on some of the strongest lines that have been put into any actor's mouth for the past twenty years—fact! as sure as you're born! Moore makes up horribly, and Kitty Vane is so over-weighted that Miss Cowes, in a straight little part of only a few lengths, gets away with her for two scenes; and Sanders is awfully preachy. If I could have had my own say about casting the piece, we'd have turned away money for six weeks and made it a sure thing for the road. I mean for the big towns, not the one-night places; it's got too many utility-people to make it pay there. But I shan't offer anything more to the stock-theatres; after this, I'm going to fit stars."
Pauline turned a covertly puzzled look upon her companion. She seemed to be hearing a new language. And yet, although the words were all familiar enough, their collocation mystified her.
"You think there is more profit, then, in fitting stars," said Kindelon, "if there is less fame?"
Mr. Paiseley laughed, with not a little bitterness. "Oh, fame," he said, "is the infirmity of the young American dramatist. I've outgrown it. I used to have it. But what's the use of fighting against France and England in the stock-theatres? Give me a fair show there, and I can draw bigger money than Dennery or Sardou—don't you make any mistake! But those foreign fellows are always crowding us natives out of New York. The managers hem and smirk over our pieces, and say they're good enough, but they've got something that's running well at the Porte Sang Martang or the Odeun in Paris. The best we can do is to have our plays done by a scratch company at some second-rate house, or, if it's a first-class house, they give us bad time. No, I fit travelling stars at so much cash down, and so much royalty afterward—that is, when I can't get a percentage on the gross. I don't work any more for fame; I want my dinner...."
"Your friend takes a rather commercial view of the American stage," said Pauline to Kindelon, after they had again moved onward.
"I am sorry to say that it is almost the only view taken by any of our dramatists. Paiseley is thoroughly representative of his class. They would all like to write a fine play, but they nearly all make the getting of money their primary object. Now, I do not believe that the lust of gain has ever been a foremost incentive in the production of any great mental achievement. Our novels and poems are to-day better than our plays, I think, because they are written with a more artistic and a less monetary stimulus. The rewards of the successful playwright may mean a fortune to him; he always remembers that when he begins, and he usually begins for the reason that he does remember it...."
Pauline had glimpses of not a few more individualities, that evening, before she at length took her leave.