ed--in
the day, now fortunately past, when a play was novelized in preference to
perpetuating its legitimate form. And excerpts from the dialogue have been
used. But this is the first time the complete text has appeared and it has
been carefully edited by the author himself. In addition to which Mr.
Belasco has written the following account of "Peter's" evolution, to be
used in this edition.

The play, "The Return of Peter Grimm," is an expression in dramatic
form of my ideas on a subject which I have pondered over since
boyhood: "Can the dead come back?" _Peter Grimm_ did come back. At
the same time, I inserted a note in my program to say that I
advanced no positive opinion; that the treatment of the play allowed
the audience to believe that it had actually seen _Peter_, or that
he had not been seen but existed merely in the minds of the
characters on the stage. Spiritualists from all over the country
flocked to see "The Return of Peter Grimm," and I have heard that it
gave comfort to many. It was a difficult theme, and more than once I
was tempted to give it up. But since it has given relief to those
who have loved and lost, it was not written in vain. Victorian
Sardou dealt with the same subject, but he did not show the return
of the dead; instead, he delivered a spirit message by means of
knocking on a table. His play was not a success, and I was warned by
my friends to let the subject alone; but it is a subject that I
never can or never have let alone; yet I never went to a medium in
my life--could not bring myself to do it. My dead must come to me,
and have come to me--or so I believe.

The return of the dead is the eternal riddle of the living. Although
mediums have been exposed since the beginning of time, and so-called
"spiritualism" has fallen into disrepute over and over again, it
emerges triumphantly in spite of charlatans, and once more becomes
the theme of the hour.

The subject first interested me when, as a boy, I read a story in
which the dead "foretold dangers to loved ones." My mother had
"premonitions" which were very remarkable, and I was convinced, at
the time, that the dead gave these messages to her. She personally
could not account for them. I probably owe my life to one of my
mother's premonitions. I was going on a steamboat excursion with my
school friends, when my mother had a strong presentiment of danger,
and begged me not to go. She gave in to my entreaties, however, much
against he