testimony to his position. This was one of the rare instances of an
American dramatist receiving such recognition. Mackaye assumed the
title-rôle, and, supporting him were Frederick de Belleville, Eben
Plympton, Sidney Drew, Julian Mitchell, May Irwin, and Genevieve
Lytton. Commenting on the occasion, the Buffalo _Courier_ said:

It was not as a playwright alone that his friends honour Mr.
Mackaye. It may be said of him with strict justice that he
is one of the few men of our day who have brought to the
much-abused theatre the intelligence, the skill, the learning
and the genius that it so much needs in an era of speculators
and buffoons. He has always been able and willing to take the
pen or the rostrum, whether at Harvard or at Steinway Hall, to
expound the principles upon which he has so assiduously worked
for the past fifteen years.

Mackaye had chosen his theme in the same spirit that Judge Conrad had
selected "Jack Cade." He wished to measure the danger of liberty,
but he did so indirectly, for the play does not abound in long
philosophical flights of definition and warning. He himself confessed
that the subject was defined only once, in these words, spoken by the
hero to the woman he loves, when she is pleading with him to flee from
France. He silences her by saying:

"I must stay to war with beasts who bring disgrace upon our
noble cause. The torch of liberty, which should light mankind
to progress, when left in madmen's hands, kindles that blaze
of anarchy whose only end is ashes."

This indicates very distinctly that Mackaye's stand for the Chicago