Charles Taft’s drawing room, in which both Will and I took part. We had become very ambitious by this time and sent all the way to New York for a professional stage-manager to help us with the production. But it turned out a most nervous occasion. We were all overtrained, I suppose. One thing after another went wrong until at the crisis of the play, where the hero is supposed to find in the barrel of a gun the scrap of paper upon which the whole plot hinges, the amateur hero looked pretty foolish when he discovered there wasn’t any gun. Another one of the company, in a fit of absentmindedness, no doubt due to overwrought nerves, had carried it off the stage, and just when the situation was getting tragic for the hero the culprit came creeping back with it and carefully put it where it belonged, for all the world as if he thought he were making himself invisible to the audience.