We sat down to dinner. Couldn’t put the plates on the table right side up these days, it seemed. Had no recollection of having turned my plate over. Turned it right side up again.
I wished people wouldn’t be silly. I supposed this was a verse about Christmas. But why the mystery? Wonderingly, I opened the folded slip of paper. Funny looking poetry. Funny look on D’s face. What was this anyhow? Looked like an old-fashioned rent receipt. But it didn’t say “Received from ——.” It said “Pay to ——,” “Pay to the order of David W. Griffith seven hundred dollars,” and it was signed “James K. Hackett.”
“Oh no, you haven’t sold the play!”
Yes, it was sold; the check represented a little advance royalty. And were the play a success we would receive a stipulated percentage of the weekly gross. (I’ve forgotten the scale.)
Oh, kind and generous Mr. Hackett!
Isn’t it funny how calm one can be in the big moments of life? But I couldn’t grasp it. Christmas eve and all! An honest-to-God check on an honest-to-God bank for seven hundred whole dollars. Was there that much money in the whole world?
Now came wonderful days—no financial worry and no job-hunting. True, we realized the seven hundred would not last indefinitely. But to accept a job and not be in New York when rehearsals for the play were called, was an idea not to be entertained. So, to feel right about the interim of inactivity, David wrote yards of poetry and several short stories. And John A. Sleicher of Leslie’s Weekly paid the princely sum of six dollars for a poem called “The Wild Duck.”
A bunch of stuff was sent off to McClure’s, which Mr. McClure said appealed to him very much—though not enough for publication. He’d like to see more of Mr. Griffith’s work.
And the Cosmopolitan, then under Perriton Maxwell’s editorship, bought “From Morning Until Night” for seventy-five dollars. Things were looking up.
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