He came in without having himself announced, nodded cheerfully, and
dropped into a chair across the desk from where I sat.
"I am not interfering with your work, am I?" he said.
"To tell the truth," I replied, "this is the busiest day in the week for
me."
"Fine," he said. "That means your mind is working at its best, brain
cells exploding in great shape, and you can follow my argument without
the slightest difficulty. What I have to say is of the highest
importance. It concerns the present condition of the stage."
"In that case," I said, "you want to see Mr. Smith. He is the editor
responsible for our dramatic page."
"I want to speak to the irresponsible editor," he said. "I asked and
they showed me in here. I think I had better begin at the beginning."
I sighed and looked out of the window. But that made no difference. He,
too, looked out of the window and spoke as follows:
"Last night," he said, "I attended the first performance of A. B.
Johnson's powerful four-act drama entitled 'H2O.' It was a remorseless
exposure of the phenomena attending the condensation of steam. In the
old days before the theatre became perfectly free the general public
knew nothing of the consequences that ensue when you bring water to a
temperature of 212 degrees Fahrenheit. The public didn't know and didn't
care. Those who did know kept the secret to themselves. I am not
exaggerating when I say that there was a conspiracy of silence on the
subject. A play like 'H2O' would have been impossible. The public would
not have tolerated such thoroughgoing realism as Johnson employs in his
first act, for instance. With absolute fidelity to things as they are he
puts before us a miniature reciprocating engine, several turbine
engines, and the latest British and German models in boilers,
piston-rods, and valve-gears. When the curtain rose on the most masterly
presentation of a machine shop ever brought before the public, the house
rocked with applause. But this was nothing compared to the delirious
outburst that marked the climax of the second act, when the hero, with
his arm about the woman he loves, proudly declares that saturated steam
under a pressure of 200 pounds shows 843.8 units of latent heat and a
volume of 2.294 cubic feet to the pound. The curtain was raised eleven
times, but the audience would not be content until the author appeared
before the footlights escorted by a master plumber and the president of
the steamfitters' union.
"The third act was laid in the reception room of a Tenderloin resort--"
"I don't quite see," I said.
"That followed inevitably from the development of the plot," he replied.
"The heroine, you must understand, had been abducted by the president
of a rival steamfitters' union and had been sold into a life of shame.
She is saved in the nick of time by an explosion of the boiler due to
superheated steam. In the old days such a scene would have been
impossible and the author's lesson about the effects of condensation and
vaporization would have been lost to the world."
"And the play will be a success?" I said.
"It's a knockout," he replied. "No play of real life with a punch like
that has been produced since C. D. Brewster put on his three-act
tragi-comedy, 'Ad Valorem.' As the title implies, the play sets out to
demonstrate the difference between the Payne-Aldrich tariff law and the
Underwood law, item by item. I have rarely seen an audience so deeply
stirred as all of us were during the long and pathetic scene toward the
end of the first act in which the author deals with the chemical and
mineral oil schedule. Are you aware that under the Underwood law the
duty on formaldehyde is reduced from twenty-five per cent. to one cent a
pound?"
"I hardly ever go to the theatre nowadays," I said.
He looked at me reproachfully.
"Some day you will find yourself, quite unexpectedly, facing a crisis in
which your ignorance of the duty on formaldehyde will cost you dear, and
then you will have cause to regret your indifference toward the progress
of the modern drama. However, the third act of 'Ad Valorem' is laid in
the reception room of a Tenderloin resort."
"What?" I said.
"It was bound to be," he replied. "Freed from all Puritanical
restrictions, the playwright of the present day follows wherever his
plot leads him in accordance with the truth of life. In 'Ad Valorem,'
for instance, the fabulously rich importer of oils and chemicals who is
the villain of the piece has succeeded in smuggling an enormously
valuable consignment of formaldehyde out of the Government warehouse.
What is more natural than that he should conceal the smuggled goods in
the Tenderloin? The case is a perfectly simple one. Forbid a playwright
to show the interior of a Tenderloin dive and the public will never know
the truth about the Underwood bill. You see, there is nothing about the
tariff in the newspapers. There is nothing in the magazines. College
professors never mention the subject. Campaign speakers ignore it. There
is a conspiracy of silence. Only the theatre offers us enlightenment on
the subject. Under such conditions would you keep the playwright from
telling us what he knows?"
"Putting it that way--" I said.
"I knew you would agree with me," he went on. "Take, for instance, E. F.
Birmingham's realistic drama, 'The Shortest Way,' in which the author
has demonstrated with implacable truthfulness and irresistible logic
that in any triangle the sum of two sides is greater than the third. In
a joint letter to the freshman classes of Columbia University and New
York University, the author and the producer of 'The Shortest Way' have
pointed out that nowhere have the principles of plane geometry been so
clearly formulated as in the second act of the play. The gunman has just
shot down his victim on the corner of Broadway and Forty-second Street.
He flees northward on Broadway to Forty-third Street and then doubles
backward on Seventh Avenue. The hero, who is a professor of mathematics,
recalling his Euclid, runs westward on Forty-second Street, and the
curtain descends. At the beginning of the next act we find that the
gunman has taken refuge in the reception room of a Tender--"
"I know," I replied. "He was driven there by the irresistible logic of
the dramatist's idea."
"Exactly," he said. And so left me.