ilure. It was not
counted either one or the other, though I must do something different
to touch the mark I am in quest of. I am only trying to show in what
fashion I was embarrassed by new conditions. My travelling manager
nearly broke his heart because I would not at first consent to allow my
villain to shoot little Harold, and at last in desperation I took his
advice and killed an idyll with a single grain of melodrama.

The piece was somehow written in the time prescribed, and was produced
'under the direct supervision of the author,' by which fact it gained
perhaps as much as might have been expected. It was produced at
Auckland, and achieved a success which it was not destined to repeat in
its fulness. It was admirably, and in one respect originally, staged.
The second act was laid in the New Zealand bush: and since at Auckland
folks know what a New Zealand bush-scene is like, it was needful to be
a little truer to nature than we found it easily possible to be when the
play was produced for a single experimental night at the Globe, or when
it ran its twelvemonth course in the English and Scotch provinces later
on.

Sir George Grey was interested in the production; and in Auckland Sir
George Grey does pretty much as he likes, as he has a right to do when
one remembers what the city, and indeed the whole colony, owes to his
patriotism, his statesmanship, and his personal generosity. Without his
aid the stage-manager's proposal could not possibly have been carried
out; but, armed with his authority, I presented myself to the curator of
the park, and from him obtained leafage enough to dress the whole scene
without the help of the scene-painter's art. We had a backcloth, to
be sure, and an artificial waterfall (which flooded the cellars,
by-the-by), but for everything else we were indebted to Sir George
Grey and pure nature. The live bush, the wounds of the woodman's axe
concealed by heaps of vari-coloured mosses, bloomed and rustled under
the limelight as I suppose it never bloomed and rustled elsewhere in the
history of the theatre, and the stage was ankle-deep in withered leaves;
the scent of the forest actually getting beyond the footlights for once
in a way.

I have never in my life seen any theatrical spectacle one-half as
lovely; and this one scene had a great deal to do with the success of
the piece. It was frantically applauded, and the scene-painter walked
in front and bowed as if he had been responsible