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for the past several years - a matter of
being unable to find the right show - which
means just bad luck.

I can't say that my six years in N.Y.
trying to make a mark were so awfully cruel
to me - especially now that I've achieved
a bit of result. But it's a very, very, trying
profession which becomes relatively more trying
as you get ahead. Great spurts of concentration
and effort, then long weeks of inertia, poverty,
wet heat and dispair. My phlegmatic doggedness
is perhaps the only quality that has kept me
going - even when there was no end in sight.
It's hard to learn for good and all that "you
can't please everybody" when you want so sincere=
ly to do so. Once you learn it's really impossi-
ble, it's easier. to find what you've pictured as
an art, true and simple, to be a rocket, false
and complex is a bitter revelation - once
that truth is swallowed it's easier still. And
if I had it all to do over again I suppose I
would wish it all to be the same.

Let's get the theater out of our hair for a
while. Do you remember Paddy Draper? He is