r "small beer."

It had been done before, of course, by Benjamin Webster and George
Vining. Henry engaged Bancroft for the Abbe, a part of quite as much
importance as his own. It was only a melodrama, but Henry could always
invest a melodrama with life, beauty, interest, mystery, by his methods
of production.

"I'm full of French Revolution," he wrote to me when he was
preparing the play for rehearsal, "and could pass an examination.
In our play, at the taking of the Bastile we must have a starving
crowd--hungry, eager, cadaverous faces. If that can be well carried
out, the effect will be very terrible, and the contrast to the
other crowd (the red and fat crowd--the blood-gorged ones who look
as if they'd been all drinking wine--_red_ wine, as Dickens says)
would be striking.... It's tiresome stuff to read, because it
depends so much on situations. I have been touching the book up
though, and improved it here and there, I think.

"A letter this morning from the illustrious Blank offering me his
prompt book to look at.... I think I shall borrow the treasure. Why
not? Of course he will say that he has produced the play and all
that sort of thing; but what does that matter, if one can only get
one hint out of it?

"The longer we live, the more we see that if we only do our own
work thoroughly well, we can be independent of everything else or
anything that may be said....

"I see in Landry a great deal of Manette--that same vacant gaze
into years gone by when he crouched in his dungeon nursing his
wrongs....

"I shall send you another book soon to put any of your alterations
and additions in. I've added a lot of little things with a few
lines for you--very good, I think, though I say it as shouldn't--I
know you'll laugh! They are perhaps not startling original, but
better than the original, anyhow! Here they are--last act!

"'Ah, Robert, pity me. By the recollections of our youth, I implore
you to save my boy!' (_Now_ for 'em!)

"'If my voice recalls a tone that ever fell sweetly upon your ear,
have pity on me! If the past is not a blank, if you once loved,
have pity on me!' (Bravo!)

"Now I call that very good, and if the 'If and the 'pitys' don't
bring down the house, well it's a pity! I pity the pittites!

"... I've just been copying out my p