formerly lived. There, upon the rear end of a suburban lot, he had a
plain board cabin not more than ten feet square. In it were a deal
table, a hard chair, and a small stove. He would go to this cabin in the
morning when the tide of suburban travel was setting the other way, and
spend his entire day there with his manuscript and his cigars. He
carried a small lunch from his home. He once told me he was satisfied
with his day's work if it provided him with ten good lines that would
not have to be abandoned. I did not take that statement to imply that
there were not in his experience the more profitable days that are in
the work of every writer--days when the subject seems to command the
pen and when the hand cannot keep pace with the vision. He was often too
saturated with his story, too much the prisoner of his people, for it to
have been otherwise; but his training had verified for him the truth
that easy writing is hard reading.

Then, too, while Bronson Howard arranged his characters for the eye and
built his story for the judgment, he wrote his speeches for the ear.
This attention to the cadence of a line was so essential to him that
when writing as he sometimes did for a magazine he studied the sound of
his phrase as if the print were to be read aloud. This same care for the
dialog would retard its production; and critical revision would enforce
still further delay.

William Gillette once said to an interviewer that "plays were not
written, but were rewritten." The experience of many play-wrights would
support that statement. In the case of Bronson Howard, the autobiography
of his 'Banker's Daughter' certainly does so. His most profitable play,
perhaps, and the one which also brought him the greatest popular
recognition, was 'Shenandoah'. That play was produced by a manager, who,
after its first performance, believed that it would not succeed. A