discouraged, but something held me to the work in spite of myself.
The choice of an occupation for my leading character was very
limited. I gave_ PETER _various trades and professions, none of
which seemed to suit the part, until I made him a quaint old
Dutchman, a nursery-man who loved his garden and perennials--the
flowers that pass away and return season after season. This gave a
clue to his character; gave him the right to found his belief in
immortality on the lessons learned in his garden.

"God does not send us strange flowers every year,
When the warm winds blow o'er the pleasant places,
The same fair flowers lift up the same fair faces.
The violet is here ...
It all comes back, the odour, grace and hue,
... it IS the THING WE KNEW.
So after the death winter it shall be," etc.

Against a background of budding trees, I placed the action of the
play in the month of April; April with its swift transitions from
bright sunlight to the darkness of passing clouds and showers. April
weather furnished a natural reason for raising and lowering the
lights--that the dead could come and go at will, seen or unseen. The
passing rain-storms blended with the tears of those weeping for
their loved ones. A man who comes back must not have a commonplace
name--a name suggestive of comedy--and I think I must have read over
every Dutch name that ever came out of Holland before I selected the
name of "_Peter Grimm_." It was chosen because it suggested (to me)
a stubborn old man with a sense of justice--whose spirit _would_
return to right a wrong and adjust his household affairs.