America," said Frohman. "Most Americans think that the actors
and actresses write their own parts. I was on the Long Branch boat the
other day and met a well-known Empire first-nighter. 'What are you going
to give us next season, Frohman?' he said.

"'I open with a little thing by Sardou,' I replied.

"'Sardou!' he cried. 'Who in thunder is Sardou?'

"All the same," Frohman continued, "I mean to be a playwright. Didn't
Lester Wallack write 'Rosedale' and 'The Veteran'? Didn't Augustin Daly
make splendid adaptations of German farces? Doesn't Belasco turn out
first-class dramas? Then why not I? I mean to learn the game. Don't give
me away, but watch my progress in play-making as we jog along through
life."

He got his first tip from Pinero. "When I have sketched out a play,"
observed the author of "The Second Mrs. Tanqueray," "I go and live among
the characters."

Frohman had no characters of his own, but he held in his brain a
fabulous store of other people's plays. And whenever they had a
historical or a literary origin he ran these origins to their lair. At
Ferney, on the Lake of Geneva, he cared nothing about Voltaire; he
wanted to see the place where the free-thinkers gathered in A. M.
Palmer's production of "Daniel Rochat." At Geneva he was not concerned
with Calvin, but with memories of a Union Square melodrama, "The Geneva
Cross." At Lyons he expected the ghosts of _Claude Melnotte_ and
_Pauline_ to meet him at the station. In Paris he allowed Napoleon to
slumber unnoticed in the Invalides while he hunted the Faubourg
Saint-Antoine for traces of "The Tale of Two Cities," and the Place de
la Concorde for the site of the guillotine on which _Sidney Carton_
died, and the Latin Quarter haunts of _Mimi_ and _Musette_, and the Bal
Bullier where _Trilby_ danced, and the Concert des Ambassadeurs where
_Zaza_ bade her lover good-by.

Any production was an excuse for these expeditions. Sir Herbert Tree had
staged "Colonel Newcome"; we had ourselves plotted a dramatization of
"Pendennis"; Mrs. Fiske had given "Vanity Fair"; so off we went, down
the Boulevard Saint-Germain, searching for the place, duly placarded,
where Thackeray lunched in the days of the "Paris Sketch-book" and the
"Ballad of Bouillabaisse."

In the towns of Kent we got on the trail of Dickens with the enthusiasm
of a Hopkinson Smith; in London, between Drury Lane and Wardour Street,
we hunted for the Old Curiosity Shop; in Yarmouth we discovered t