The Washington herald., 1920-09-08

impOssibility was seeking to evolve
into some fixed outline in my mind
that the idea for the present play
came to me in an ineXplainable
fash. There seems little definite
relation between them. POSSIBLY,
II properly psyChed, it would be
found that my inability to climb
over the rigid hills of modern dra-
matte technique had resulted in a
complex which found expression in
Roberts life imprisonment within
the narrow confines of the farm)
Il think the real life experience
from which the idea of 'Reyond the
Horizon sDrang was this. On the
British tramp steamer on which |
made voyage as ordinary seaman.
Ruenos Aires to New York. there
WAS Norwegian A r.. and We
became quite good friends. The
El eat sorrow and mistake Of his
life, he used to grumble, was that.
as hoy. he had left the small pa
ternal farm to run away to sea. H.
had been at sea twenty years, and
had never gone home once in that
time. ! don't imagine he had writ
ten home or received a letter from
there in years.
He was bred-in-the- bone child
OF the sea if there ever was one
with his feet on the plunging deck
he was planted like a natural
grown in which was good clean
earth to him. II ever man was
IN perfect harmony with his en-
yironment real part Of it, this
Norwegian was
Loved His Sea Life.
Yet he cursed the sea and the
life it had led him-affectionateI
Tie loved to hold forth on what a
1901 he had been to leave the farm
l mere was the life for you he used
to tell the grumblers all in the
I" cstIe. man on his own farm
was his own boss. He didn't have
to eat rotten grub. and battle bed
bugs. and risk his life in storms
on a rotten old 'lime-jGice' tramp.
lie didn't have to wait for the end
or a long voyage for a pay day and
"a good drunk.
NO sir man on mis- own farm
could get drunk every Saturday
night and stay drunk all day Sun
day II he wanted to! cat this point
the roc stle to a man became con-
Nerted to agricultural Then, too,
a man on farm could get mar
.ried and have kids.
FINALLY, the Norwegian. having
got rid of his farm inhibition for
the time being. would grin resign
cdIy, and take up his seif-appointcd
ouraen or making a rope mat for
some gel in Barracks he had prom
lsed 1t to the next trip down.
But what has this intenselv-to-
be-envied squarehead got to do with
Beyond the Horizon you will ask?
Just this. at exactly the right mo-
ment' when l was floundering about
IN the maze Of the novel-play. he
turned up in my memory. I thought,
What if he had stayed on the farm.
with his instincts"
What would have happened?
hut 1 realized at once he never
would have stayed, not even II he
mad saddled himself with the wife
and Kids. 1t amused him to pretend
he craved the farm. He was too
harmonious a creation of the god
OF things as they are. As well ex-
pect a seagull to remain in a barn
yard-for ethical reasons.
Robert Mayo" Is Born.
ANA from that point / started
TO think OF a more intellectual
owned type-a weaker type from
the standpoint of the above
TONED god--a man who would have
my NorweEian's Unborn craving for
the seas unrest, only that in him it
would be conscious, too conscious,
intellectually diluted into a vague.
Intangible, romantic wanderlust.
his powers of resistance, both
moral and physical, would also prob
ably be Correspondingiy watered.
lie would throw saway his instinc-
tive dream and accept the thrall-
dom OF the farm for-why, for al
most any nice little poetical crav-
ing, the romance of sex, say
And so Robert Mayo was born,
and developed from that beginning,
and Ruth and the others, and finally
the complete play"