Mrs. Blair,
poor dear, can't write. God knows I can't. That is why the play has been
through years of lying around in every office in New York. But the idea
is there. You see, it is everything she has lived through. You know
her story?"
"Yes."
"There is a scene when he comes screaming out of the room after having
been through the third degree, half blind from the terrible lights and
the terrible circle of terrible eyes, that isn't writing at all. It's
life--a raw, palpitating picture of a social abuse that can touch the
public as a reform measure can never hope to. Then the character of the
boy--a delinquent. We've one right here in this apartment. One of those
sweet, shy, half-frightened boys as gentle as a girl. The kind that
tells the neighborhood children Peter Pan and reads his grandmother to
sleep. I would trust him anywhere with Zoe, and yet there's the streak!
The criminal, congenital streak through him that is as pathological as
measles. Only we handle it under the heading of criminology. It's like
taking an earache to the chiropodist. The boy is a thief. It's through
him like a rotten spot, but instead of curing him the law wants to
punish him.
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