Page:Christopher Morley--Tales from a rolltop desk.djvu/235

all spring. Of course there are the pictures, and summer stock, but I gathered that he had been ill, and then had turned down several offers of that sort on account of something coming along that he had great hopes for. I remembered his really outstanding work in "After Dinner", that satiric comedy that fell dead the winter before. Most of the critics gave it a good roasting, but knowing what I do now I expect the real trouble was poor direction. Fagan was the director, and what did he know of sophisticated comedy? As I say, I had reviewed the piece for the Observer, and had been greatly struck by Edwards's playing. Not a leading part, but exquisitely done.

But just at that time I was absorbed in my own not-too-successful affairs. For several years I had been saying to myself that I would do great stuff if I could only get away from the newspaper grind for a few months. And then, when I had saved up five hundred dollars, and buried myself there on Seventy-third Street to write, I couldn't seem to make any headway. I got half through the novel, and then saw that it was paltry stuff. It was flashy, spurious, and raw. One warm evening I was sitting at my window, smoking mournfully and watching some girls who were laughing and talking in a big apartment house that loomed over