The American Artist and His Times by Homer Saint-Gaudens; Dodd, Mead & Company, 1941

Man Friday to Maude Adams for so long I can remember those numbing dress rehearsals where Alexander would work until 2:00 A. M. with Miss Adams before the opening of "Peter Pan," solving such inconsequential details as the proper set to the ostrich's tail.

He would have agreed with Maude Adams who always insisted that she did not want talkative actors in her cast. To her when they had wasted their emotions in saloon conversation they had none left for audiences. She was right. The present-day painter who talks best says little with his brush. Homer spoke little but expressed much by way of his pig. ments. He recorded his own life in his own way.

Peter Pan" continued to play to packed thousands from Tulsa, Oklahoma, to Calgary, Canada, as Maude Adams called to entranced audiences to wave their handkerchiefs and clap their hands if they believed in fairies. I ought to know; I was in and out of that broken-down old sleeping car, the "Pichili," as we went through eight weeks of onenight stands in the not-too-sunny South. I even led the orchestra during part of one performance, when the "Wrath of God," our leader, had missed the train for Calgary in the great Northwest.

The main source of this grief, I take it, is that there exists today little or no appreciation by the artist of his public, none of the willingness to cooperate so essential and so obvious, for example, in the theater. Maude Adams was my female evangelist ever preaching this doctrine. If an actor in her company did not strive to meet halfway those "out in front," she would not have him on her stage.

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