almost exclusively from the Irish at that time in the
middle West; or the meal was with the brakemen in the switch
shanties, these brakemen generally Americans rather near the
soil; or was with the engineers and firemen in their cabs,
or on the running-boards of boxcars with trainmen. Without
knowing it, I acquired the ability of getting the other
fellow's point of view, and, when I got old enough not to be
overwrought by sympathy that was inclined to be too partisan,
I found an immense intellectual enjoyment in watching the
interplay between temperament and environment. I think this
answers your question. I have retained a gossip's ability to
be interested in most anybody else's affairs."

It is a strange combination--this democratic sympathy, with a later
developed French finesse of technique, so clearly felt in comparing
one of his "soil" plays, like "Alabama," with a more finished product,
like "As a Man Thinks." The word "robustness" has been applied to
Thomas, which recalls that when 10-cent melodrama was in flower on the
American stage, the writer of "Convict 999" was called the Augustus
Thomas of melodrama, and the inventor of "Jennie, the Sewing Machine
Girl" was regarded as the Clyde Fitch of melodrama. Thomas is as
careful in observing the small psychologies of men as Fitch ever was
of women. There is a neatness, a finish to his small scenes that hint
at a depth and largeness which he has never given rein to in any play
he has thus far written. The consequence is, when he aimed at mental
effect, the result was nearly always pompous, as when _Dr. Seelig_,
in "As a Man Thinks," tries to explain the psychological matrix of the
piece, and as when _Jack Brookfield_, in "The Witching Hour," explains
the basis of telepathy. But when he aimed nowhere, yet gave us living,
breathing flashes of character, as dominate "The Other Girl" and are