ack to the footlights. I compliment him on his
splendid mendacity, in which he is unsupported, save by a little plea in
a theatrical paper which is innocent enough to think that ten guineas a
year with board and lodging is an impossibly low wage for a barmaid. It
goes on to cite Mr Charles Booth as having testified that there are
many laborers' wives who are happy and contented on eighteen shillings
a week. But I can go further than that myself. I have seen an Oxford
agricultural laborer's wife looking cheerful on eight shillings a week;
but that does not console me for the fact that agriculture in England
is a ruined industry. If poverty does not matter as long as it is
contented, then crime does not matter as long as it is unscrupulous. The
truth is that it is only then that it does matter most desperately.
Many persons are more comfortable when they are dirty than when they are
clean; but that does not recommend dirt as a national policy.

Here I must for the present break off my arduous work of educating the
Press. We shall resume our studies later on; but just now I am tired of
playing the preceptor; and the eager thirst of my pupils for improvement
does not console me for the slowness of their progress. Besides, I must
reserve space to gratify my own vanity and do justice to the six artists
who acted my play, by placing on record the hitherto unchronicled
success of the first representation. It is not often that an author,
after a couple of hours of those rare alternations of excitement and
intensely attentive silence which only occur in the theatre when actors
and audience are reacting on one another to the utmost, is able to step
on the stage and apply the strong word genius to the representation with
the certainty of eliciting an instant and overwhelming assent from the
audience. That was my good fortune on the afternoon of Sunday, the fifth
of January last. I was certainly extremely fortunate in my interpreters
in the enterprise, and that not alone in respect of their artistic
talent; for had it not been for their superhuman patience, their
imperturbable good humor and good fellowship, there could have been no
performance. The terror of the Censor's power gave us trouble enough to
break up any ordinary commercial enterprise. Managers promised and even
engaged their theatres to us after the most explicit warnings that the
play was unlicensed, and at the last moment suddenly realized that Mr
Redford had their liv