I was reading a newspaper one morning when the
name of my play caught my eye. You can imagine how eagerly I started to
read the item about it, and what my feelings were when I saw that it was
immediately to be produced by the very actor to whom I had talked of
sending it, and that the author was George A. Bagley. I thought there
must be some mistake, and fell upon Bagley for an explanation as soon as
he came home. He laughed, as men of his kind do when they think they have
played some clever business trick; said he had decided to rent the play
to the actor instead of taking it on the road himself; and declared that
as it was his sole property, he could represent it as the work of anybody
he chose. I raised a great stew about the matter; wrote to the
newspapers, and rushed to see the actor. He may have thought I was a
lunatic from my excitement; however, he showed me the manuscript Bagley
had given him. It was typewritten, but the address of the typewriter
copyist was on the cover. I hastened to the lady, and inquired about the
manuscript from which she had made the copy. I showed her some of my
penmanship, but she assured me the manuscript was in another hand. I ran
home, and demanded the original manuscript from Bagley. 'Oh, certainly,'
he said, and fished out a manuscript in his own writing. He had copied
even my interlineations and erasures, to give his manuscript the look of
an original draft. This was the copy from which the typewriter had
worked.
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