innocence, that we retained it. The little girl ran on the stage at
every rehearsal at the usual place. But no one knew what to do with her.
The actress who played the part of Lilian caught her in her arms, in
various attitudes; but none of them seemed right. The actor who played
Routledge tried to drop his head, according to instructions, but he
looked uncomfortable, not reverential. The next day we had the little
girl run on from another entrance. She stopped in the center of the
stage. Lilian stared at her a moment and then exclaimed: "Mr. Howard,
what shall I do with this child?" Routledge, who had put his hands in
his pocket, called out: "What's the girl doing here, anyway, Howard?" I
could only answer: "She used to be all right; I don't know what's the
matter with her now." And I remember seeing an anxious look on the face
of the child's mother, standing at the side of the stage. She feared
there was something wrong about her own little darling who played the
part of Natalie. I reassured her on this point; for the fact that I was
in error was forcing itself on my mind, in spite of my desire to retain
the scene. You will hardly believe that I am speaking literally, when I
tell you that it was not until the 19th rehearsal that we yielded to the
inevitable, and decided not to have the child come on at all at that
point. The truth was this: now that Lilian saved herself in her own
strength, the child had no dramatic function to fulfill. So strongly did
we all feel the force of a dramatic law which we could not, and would
not, see. Our own natural human instinct--the instinct which the
humblest member of an audience feels, without knowing anything of
dramatic law--got the better of three men, trained in dramatic work,
only by sheer force, and against our own determined opposition. We were
three of Stephenson's cows--or shall I say three calves?--standing on
the track, and we could not succeed where Jumbo failed.

The third step, in the changes forced upon us by the laws of dramatic