playwriting, one remembers stories and scenes, rather
than personages; one recalls characteristics rather than characters;
one treasures quick interplay of words rather than the close reason
for such. Because of that, some are right in attributing to him a
feminine quickness of observation, or rather a minute observation for
the feminine. That is why he determined, in "The City," to dispel the
illusion that he could not write a man's play, or draw masculine
characters. Yet was not _Sam Coast_, in "Her Own Way," almost the
equal of _Georgiana Carley_?

I recall, one midnight--the week before Mr. Fitch sailed on his last
trip to Europe--he read me "The City," two acts of which were in
their final shape, the third in process of completion. There used to
be a superstition among the managers to the effect that if you ever
wished to consider a play by Fitch, he must be kept from reading it
himself; for if he did, you would accept it on the spot. All the
horror of that powerful arraignment of city life, and the equally
powerful criticism of country life, was brought out on this evening we
were together, and I was able to see just where, as a stage director,
Clyde Fitch must have been the mainstay at rehearsals. He never lived
to give the final touches to his manuscript of "The City,"--touches
which always meant so much to him; he was dead by the time rehearsals
were called, and there slipped from the performance some of the
significant atmosphere he described to me.

There comes vividly to my mind his questions after the reading--trying
out his effects on me, so to speak. Rapidly he reviewed the work on
the third act he had planned for the morrow, consulting with me as
though suddenly I had become a collaborator. In such a way he must
have planned with Mansfield over _Brummell_; thus he may have worked
with Julia Marlowe, telling her some of the romantic incidents he had
drawn from his mother's own Maryland love story for "Barbara
Frietchie." In the same naive spirit, he consulted, by letter, with
Arthur Byron for his "stardom" in "Major Andre"--which waned so soon
after the first night.

Everything about the room that evening he read "The City" bore
evidence of the playwright's personality. The paintings and
bric-a-brac, the books--mostly biography and letters--the tapestries
which seemed to blend with the bowls of flowers and furniture of
French design, the windows looking out on lawns, gardens, and a pond
with swans upo