And shall again," he laughed. "The right thing isn't easy to get."

"Cheer up," he added kindly, "this is only your first attempt. We must
try and knock it into shape at rehearsal."

Their notion of "knocking it into shape" was knocking it to pieces.

"I'll tell you what we'll do," would say the low comedian; "we'll cut
that scene out altogether." Joyously he would draw his pencil through
some four or five pages of my manuscript.

"But it is essential to the story," I would argue.

"Not at all."

"But it is. It is the scene in which Roderick escapes from prison and
falls in love with the gipsy."

"My dear boy, half-a-dozen words will do all that. I meet Roderick at
the ball. 'Hallo, what are you doing here?' 'Oh, I have escaped from
prison.' 'Good business. And how's Miriam?' 'Well and happy--she is
going to be my wife!' What more do you want?"

"I have been speaking to Mr. Hodgson," would observe the leading lady,
"and he agrees with me, that if instead of falling in love with Peter, I
fell in love with John--"

"But John is in love with Arabella."

"Oh, we've cut out Arabella. I can sing all her songs."

The tenor would lead me into a corner. "I want you to write in a little
scene for myself and Miss Duncan at the beginning of the first act. I'll
talk to her about it. I think it will be rather pretty. I want her--the
second time I see her--to have come out of her room on to a balcony, and
to be standing there bathed in moonlight."

"But the first act takes place in the early morning."

"I've thought of that. We must alter it to the evening."

"But the opera opens with a hunting scene. People don't go hunting by
moonlight."

"It will be a novelty. That's what's wanted for comic opera. The
ordinary hunting scene! My dear boy, it has been done to death."

I stood this sort of thing for a week. "They are people of experience,"
I argued to myself; "they must know more about it than I do." By the
end of the week I had arrived at the conclusion that anyhow they didn't.
Added to which I lost my temper. It is a thing I should advise any lady
or gentleman thinking of entering the ranks or dramatic authorship to
lose as soon as possible. I took both manuscripts with me, and, entering
Mr. Hodgson's private room, closed the door behind me. One parcel
was the opera as I had originally written it, a neat, intelligible
manuscript, whatever its other merits. The second, scored, interlined,
altered, cut, interleaved,