Publisher's Synopsis
The night before, Canby was as eagerly happy as a boy at Christmas Eve. He tossed away his old employment because of his new career-opening so gloriously, with Talbot Potter's having accepted the play!
But now came the letter from that actor with the famous smile: "Come up to my apartments at the Pantheon after dinner and let me see what changes you have been able to make in the play. I should like to look at them before deciding to put on another play I have been considering."
Madison Avenue, after dark, shows little to reassure a new playwright who carries in his pocket a note ending with the words, "before deciding to put on another play I have been considering." It was Bleak Street, that night, for young Stewart Canby, and a bleak, bleak walk he took therein.
Booth Tarkington (1869-1946), two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize, wrote such keenly observed novels of American life as Gentle Julia and In the Arena.
