Mrs. Thurston has travelled widely and has resided for periods of time in Mexico City and Havana, Cuba. She is an able linguist and has made a special study of her native English tongue and of Spanish and French, all of which she uses fluently.
From childhood she has shown dramatic ability. Her dramatic composition has been more or less directly associated with the courses in playwriting and the history of the drama which she completed in the University of Utah. Among her one-act plays are When a Man's Hungry, And the Devil Laughs, and The Exchange.
Mrs. Thurston has an aptitude for delicate and satirical farce. The Exchange is an excellent example of farce-comedy in the contemporary one-act play.
| CHARACTERS |
| Judge, the exchanger of miseries |
| Imp, office boy to the Judge |
| A Poor Man |
| A Vain Woman |
| A Rich Citizen |
THE EXCHANGE[C]
SCENE I
The curtain rises upon an office scene. Seemingly there is nothing unusual about this office: it has tables, chairs, a filing cabinet, and a hat-rack. A portion of the office is railed off at the right. Within this enclosed space is a commodious desk and swivel-chair; and the filing cabinet stands against the wall. This railed-off portion of the office belongs, exclusively, to the Judge. Here he is wont to spend many hours—sometimes to read or write, and again, perhaps, he will just sit and ponder upon the vagaries of mankind. The Judge is a tall, spare man with rather long gray hair, which shows beneath the skull-cap that he always wears. When we first see him, he is reading a letter, and evidently he is not pleased, for he is tapping with impatient fingers upon his desk.
At the left of the stage is a heavily curtained door which leads to an inner room. At centre rear is another door which evidently leads to the street, as it is through this door that the Poor Man, the Vain Woman, and the Rich Citizen will presently enter, each upon his special quest. The hat-rack stands near the street door, and we glimpse a soft black hat and a long black overcoat hanging upon it.
Down stage to the left is a flat-topped desk, littered with papers and letters. This desk has two large drawers, wherein a number of miscellaneous articles might be kept. It is at this desk that we catch our first glimpse of Imp. He is busily writing in a huge ledger, and he seems to be enjoying his work, for he chuckles the while. Imp is a little rogue; he looks it and acts it, and we feel that he has a Mephistophelian spirit. He wears a dark-green tight-fitting uniform, trimmed with red braid. His saucy little round cap is always cocked over one eye. He is ever chuckling impishly, and we feel that he is slyly gleeful over the weaknesses of mankind and the difficulties that beset them.