I never write a play that
won't appeal to England, Germany, France just as well as to America.
America's big, but it isn't big enough for me.... Well, as I was
saying, soon after that I got a one-act play produced at Hannibal,
Missouri. And the same week there was a company at another theatre
there playing the old man's 'Forty-Niners.' And the next morning the
theatrical critic's article in the Hannibal _Courier-Post_ was headed:
'Rival attractions. Archibald Florance's "Forty-Niners" and new play
by Seven Sachs.' I cut that heading out and sent it to the old man in
London, and I wrote under it, 'See how far I've got in six months.'
When he came back he took me into his company again.... What price
that, eh?"
Edward Henry could only nod his head. The customarily silent Seven
Sachs had little by little subdued him to an admiration as mute as it
was profound.
"Nearly five years after that I got a Christmas card from old
Florance. It had the usual printed wishes--'Merriest possible
Christmas and so on'--but, underneath that, Archibald had written in
pencil, 'You've still five years to go.' That made me roll my sleeves
up, as you may say. Well, a long time after that I was standing at the
corner of Broadway and Forty-fourth Street, and looking at my own name
in electric letters on the Criterion Theatre. First time I'd ever
seen it in electric letters on Broadway.
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