n of "In Mizzoura," and this
inclusion removes from him the necessity of commenting too lengthily
on that play, for fear of creating an anti-climax.

Read consecutively, the prefaces suggest Mr. Thomas's mental
equipment, his charm and distinction of personality, the variety of
his experiences which have given him a man's observation of people and
of things. The personalia are dropped in casually, here and there, not
so much for the purpose of specific biography, as to illustrate the
incentives which shaped his thought and enriched his invention as a
playwright. His purpose in writing these forewords is just a little
didactic; he addresses the novice who may be befuddled after reading
various "Techniques of the Drama," and who looks to the established
and successful dramatist for the secrets of his workshop. These
prefaces reveal Thomas as working more with chips than with whole
planks from a virgin forest. He confesses as much, when he talks of
"Mrs. Leffingwell's Boots." It was "salvage," he writes, "it was the
marketing of odds and ends and remnants, utterly useless for any other
purpose." Yet, with the technical dexterity, which is Mr. Thomas's
strongest point, he pieced a bright comedy picture together--a very
popular one, too. In the course of his remarks, he says, "When I had
the art department on the old St. Louis Republican--" "There is an
avenue of that name [Leffingwell] in St. Louis, near a hill where I
used to report railroad strikes." Similar enlightening facts dot the
preface to "In Mizzoura," suggesting his varied employment in the
express and railroad business. Thus, with personal odds and ends,
we can build a picture of Thomas before he started on his regular
employment as a playwright, in 1884, with "Editha's Burglar", in
conjunction with Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett.

There is an autobiographical comment published, written presumably at
the request of the late Hamilton Wright Mabie, which is not only worth
preserving as a matter of record, but as measuring a certain facility
in anecdote and felicity of manner which have always made Thomas a
welcome chairman of gatherings and a polished after-dinner speaker.

"After Farragut ran the New Orleans blockade," he states, "my
father took direction of the St. Charles Theatre, New Orleans,
then owned by Ben De Bar. When he returned to St. Louis, in
1865, I was in my seventh year, and my earliest recollections
are tinged with his stories