"Yes, sir; there are only 439 pages."
"Oh, is that all? How many characters, scenes, and acts, and how long do you think it would take to play it?" asked the manager, trying to be as sarcastic as possible.
"There are forty-seven characters in the dramatis personæ," the playwright answered, nothing daunted, "nine acts, and it might take three hours or more to play it through."
"How many people get killed in it?"
"Only thirteen."
"Oh, pshaw!" said the manager; "go and kill off thirty more of 'em and then you will have a play worth talking about. You've got to kill somebody off every five minutes to make it stick. You needn't leave any more of them alive than just enough to group into a happy tableau at the end of the last act."
"I don't think I can do it," said the playwright.
"Oh, yes, you can," the manager insisted. "Just try it once; and here, take this pass and go and see 'Hazel Kirke' to-night. It plays only until eleven o'clock, and we don't think it quite long enough. If you could tone your play down so that we might use it for a kind of prologue or something of that sort it would be better."
The young man took the pass and departed. He was the queerest dramatist the country and century have produced, except possibly A. C. Gunter. He was fully six feet high, large and sharp-featured, with a light like lunacy dazzling in his black eyes and across his sallow face. His hands were large and his feet big, and as he ambled along the hotel hall he looked like an over-grown plowboy who had suddenly and mysteriously turned book-peddler. Besides all this he seemed very hungry.
Early the next morning he was at Bernard's bedside again. He had seen "Hazel Kirke," and thought over the manager's advice, but had not made the changes suggested because he was of the opinion now more than ever that the play would suit Mr. Bernard. Would the manager allow him to read it out to him? Its title was "Love and the Grave." The manager said he might leave the manuscript to be looked over during the day, but the dramatist said he preferred to read it so that none of the good points would be lost. Then the manager told him to call again. He called again early the next morning. The manager was still too busy and too sleepy to hear the play. The dramatist said he hated to part from his manuscript; he had been five years writing the play, but he liked Mr. Bernard and would leave it with him for twenty-four hours. The manager suggested that there was a possibility of the play being lost if the hotel were to take fire, but the young man answered that he had ascertained that the hotel was fire-proof, and he was willing to take the chances. He went away leaving the voluminous manuscript in the manager's possession. Of course Bernard didn't read it, but when the dramatist returned Friday morning he told him it was very good, and if the dramatist cared he could give him a letter to the manager of a Chinese theatre in San Francisco, who would be glad to purchase and produce such a play. The dramatist hoisted his manuscript under his arm, said he was sorry the Madison Square people couldn't use it, and went out hungrier-looking and more awkward than ever. Bernard hoped that it was the last of him.