“My advice is to throw this play in the wastebasket and write one about that man.”
“Will you produce it if I do?”
“Probably not, but I’ll look it over. What else have you done?”
“I have finished two things. One I call ‘The Vision’—this is a Brotherhood of Man play—the other I call ‘Peace,’ and it’s a dramatization of the Universal Peace idea.”
“Why don’t you write something human? Nobody wants dramatized movements. The public wants people, personalities, things we all know and feel. You can’t get much thrill out of Universal Peace.”
“But I believe the public should be taught.”
“Yes, I know. I get all of you ‘uplift boys’ sooner or later. Teach them all you like, but learn your trade so thoroughly that they will have no idea that they are being taught. That is the function of the artist-playwright. What do you do besides write plays?”
“Just at present I drive a cab,” Jarvis answered simply.
“You don’t say? How does that happen?”
“I was up against it for money, and I took this to oblige a friend cabby who has rheumatism.”
