home, at a certain corner of
Broadway, where numbers of smooth-shaven, handsome men, and women with
dark eyes and champagned hair were lounging and passing. He had got it
on the desperate chance that it might suggest something useful to him.
He now took it out of his coat-pocket, and began to look its
advertisements over in the light of his study lamp, partly because he
was curious about it, and partly because he knew that he should begin to
revise his play otherwise, and then he should not sleep all night.

In several pages of the paper ladies with flowery and alliterative names
and pseudonyms proclaimed themselves in large letters, and in smaller
type the parts they were presently playing in different combinations;
others gave addresses and announced that they were At Liberty, or
specified the kinds of roles they were accustomed to fill, as Leads or
Heavies, Dancing Soubrettes and Boys; Leads, Emotional and Juvenile;
Heavy or Juvenile or Emotional Leads. There were gentlemen seeking
engagements who were Artistic Whistling Soloists, Magicians, Leading
Men, Leading Heavies, Singing and Dancing Comedians, and there were both
ladies and gentlemen who were now Starring in this play or that, but
were open to offers later. A teacher of stage dancing promised
instruction in skirt and serpentine dancing, as well as high kicking,
front and back, the backward bend, side practice, toe-practice, and all
novelties. Dramatic authors had their cards among the rest, and one poor
fellow, as if he had not the heart to name himself, advertised a play to
be heard of at the office of the newspaper. Whatever related to the
theatre was there, in bizarre solidarity, which was droll enough to
Maxwell in one way. But he hated to be mixed up with all that, and he
perceived that he must be mixed up with it more and more, if he wrote
for the theatre. Whether he liked it or not, he was part of the thing
which in its entirety meant high-kicking and toe-practice, as well as
the expression of the most mystical passions of the heart. There was an
austerity in him which the fact offended, and he did what he could to
appease this austerity by reflecting that it was the drama and never the
theatre that he loved; but for the time this was useless. He saw that if
he wrote dramas he could not hold aloof from the theatre, nor from
actors and actresses--heavies and juveniles, and emotionals and
soubrettes. He must know them, and more intimately; and at first he