Crowded Out! and Other Sketches

ompelled to "cut" the service, in other words to resign. Some other Englishman got my post and I found myself, rather unexpectedly, it is true, free to write to my heart's content.

I got off a number of things, poems, sketches, etc., but my great work turned out to be a comedy. I slaved at this all day and amused myself by rehearsing it in my lodgings all night. I incurred the odium of the landlady by coaxing the maid of all work to learn a part and act it with me. Finally I resolved to take a great step. I would go down to New York and get my comedy produced. That was exactly five years ago and though the comedy was not produced, I am still sanguine that it yet may be, and perhaps not in New York after all, but in a much more important creative centre.

I was at the time of my visit to New York perfectly unacquainted with the ways of a metropolis, and it was fortunate for me that I possessed one friend there who if not exactly a friend at court as we say, was in truth a much more usefu