tion, he grew heartily ashamed of himself. His
affairs, moreover, began to take on a desperate aspect; the season
threatened to be a ruinous failure, and he had no play ready to
substitute for "Naughty Anthony." Some time before a friend had sent
him Mr. Long's book, but he had carelessly tossed it aside. In his
straits it came under his eyes again, and this time he saw a play in
it--a play and a promise of financial salvation. It was late at night
when he read the story, but he had come to a resolve by morning and in
his mind's eye had already seen his actors in Japanese dress. The drama
lay in the book snugly enough; it was only necessary to dig it out and
materialize it to the vision. That occupation is one in which Mr.
Belasco is at home. The dialogue went to his actors a few pages at a
time, and the pictures rose rapidly in his mind. Something different
from a stockinged leg now!

Glimpses of Nippon--its mountains, waters, bridges, flowers, gardens,
geishas; as a foil to their grace and color the prosaic figures of a
naval officer and an American Consul. All things tinged with the bright
light of day, the glories of sunset or the super-glories of sunrise. We
must saturate the fancy of the audience with the atmosphere of Japan,
mused Mr. Belasco. Therefore, Japanese scenes, my painter! Electrician,
your plot shall be worked out as carefully as the dialogue and action
of the play's people. "First drop discovered; house-lights down; white
foots with blue full work change of color at back of drop; white lens
on top of mountain; open light with white, straw, amber, and red on
lower part of drop; when full on lower footlights to blue," and so on.
Mr. Belasco's emotions, we know, find eloquent expression in stage
lights. But the ear must be carried off to the land of enchantment as
well as the eye. "Come, William Furst, recall your experiences on the
Western coast. For my first curtain I want a quaint, soft Japanese
melody, pp--you know how!"

And so "Madame Butterfly," the play, was made. In two weeks all was
ready, and a day after the first performance at the Herald Square
Theatre, on March 5, 1900, the city began to hum with eager comment on
the dramatic intensity of the scene of a Japanese woman's vigil, of the
enthralling eloquence of a motionless, voiceless figure, looking
steadily through a hole torn through a paper partition, with a sleeping
child and a nodding maid at her feet, while a mimic night wore on, the