dern Helen," which was considered a smart
allusion. This paragraph was copied by the leading paper of his native
city, and his father wrote to know if it were really true that he was
about to marry a play-actress.

This gave a distinct shock to Douglass, for it made definite and very
moving the vague dreams which had possessed him in his hours of
reflection. His hands clinched, and while his heart beat fast and his
breath shortened he said: "Yes, I will win her if I can"; but he was not
elated. The success of his play was still in the future, and till he had
won his wreath he had no right to address her in any terms but those of
friendship.

In spite of the flood of advance notices and personal paragraphs, in
spite of envious gossip, he lived on quietly in his attic-room at the
Roanoke. He had few friends and no intimates in the city, and cared
little for the social opportunities which came to him. Confident of
success, he gave up his connection with _The Blazon_, whose editor
valued his special articles on the drama so much as to pay him
handsomely for them. The editor of this paper, Mr. Anderson, his most
intimate acquaintance, was of the Middle West, and from the first
strongly admired the robust thought of the young architect whose
"notions" concerning the American drama made him trouble among his
fellow-craftsmen.

"You're not an architect, you're a critic," he said to him early in
their accidental acquaintance. "Now, I want to experiment on you. I want
you to see Irving to-night and write your impressions of it. I have a
notion you'll startle my readers."

He did. His point of view, so modern, so uncompromising, so unshaded by
tradition, delighted Anderson, and thereafter he was able to employ the
young playwright regularly. These articles came to have a special value
to the thoughtful "artists" of the stage, and were at last made into a
little book, which sold several hundred copies, besides bringing him to
the notice of a few congenial cranks and come-outers who met in an old
tavern far down in the old city.

These articles--this assumption of the superior air of the critic--led
naturally to the determination to write a play to prove his theories,
and now that the play was written and the trial about to be made his
anxiety to win the public was very keen. He had a threefold reason for
toiling like mad--to prove his theories, to gain bread, and to win
Helen; and his concentration was really destructive. He