Owing to the congenital diffidence of Ambrose Deacon, the unforeseen success of The Stafford Will Case merely embarrassed him. Before the production of this drama, to be sure, he had enjoyed a modest position in the world of letters. His stories of mail-clerks and milkmen had been accepted for publication with alacrity, if not with enthusiasm, by the editor of the Saturday Evening Post, and two of his one-act comedies had been performed on the vaudeville stage to rapidly cumulating returns.
Nevertheless, prior to the production of The Stafford Will Case, the world, artistic, critical, and social, had not exhibited sufficient interest in his mousetraps to make a pilgrimage, actual or figurative, to the home of their inventor. Now, however, he had suddenly become a figure of almost national importance. He had been photographed by Steichen for Vanity Fair, the New Yorker had run his Profile, George Jean Nathan had devoted an entire paper in the American Mercury to a discussion of his original talent, and the directors of the. Theatre
[3]
