t write a play! Take Chekhov, now!” whined Seth. “That guy never wrote a real play in his life! He never knew how to write a play! He couldn’t have written a play if he tried! He never learned the rules for writing a play!—That Cherry Orchard now,” whined old Seth with a sour sneering laugh, “—that Cherry Orchard that you guys are always raving about! That’s not a play!” he cried indignantly. “Whatever made you think it was a play? I was trying to read it just the other day,” he rasped, “and there’s nothing there to hold your interest! It’s got no plot! There’s no story in it! There’s no suspense! Nothing happens in it. All you got is a lot of people who do nothing but talk all the time. You never get anywhere,” said Seth scornfully. “And yet to hear you guys rave about it, you’d think it was a great play.”
“Well, what do you call a great play, then, if The Cherry Orchard isn’t one?” one of the young men said acidly. “Who wrote the great plays that you talk about?”
“Why, George M. Cohan wrote some,” whined Seth instantly. “That’s who. Avery Hopwood wrote some great plays. We’ve had plenty of guys in this country who wrote great plays. If they’d come from Russia you’d get down and worship’em,” he said bitterly; “but just because they came out of this country they’re no good!”
In the relation of the class towards old Seth Flint, it was possible to see the basic falseness of their relation towards life everywhere around them. For here was a man—whatever his defects as a playwright might have been—who had lived incomparably the richest, most varied and dangerous, and eventful life among them; as he was himself far more interesting than any of the plays they wrote, and as dramatists they should have recognized and understood his quality. But they saw none of this. For their relation towards life and people such as old Seth Flint was not one of understanding. It was not even one of burning indignation—of that indignation which is one of the dynamic forces in the artist’s life. It was rather one of supercilious scorn and ridicule.
They felt that they were “above” old Seth, and most of the other people in the world, and for this reason they were in Professor Hatcher’s class. Of Seth they said:
“He’s really a misfit, terribly out of place here. I wonder why he came.”
And they would listen to an account of one of Seth’s latest errors in good taste with the expression of astounded disbelief, the tones of stunned incredulity which
