And there was McCord, bless his enthusiastic, materialistic heart, who seemed to take fire from this joint companionship and was determined to do something, he scarcely knew what—draw, paint, write, collect—anything. His mind was so wrought up by the rich pattern which life was weaving before his eyes that he could scarcely sleep at nights. He was for prowling about with us these winter and spring days, looking at the dark city after work hours, or investigating these wretched dives with Dick and myself. Or, the three of us would take a banjo, a mandolin and a flute (McCord could perform on the flute and Dick on the mandolin) and go to Forrest Park or one of the minor parks on the south side, and there proceed to make the night hideous with our carolings until some solid policeman, assuming that the public had rights, would interfere and bid us depart. Our invariable retort on all such occasions was that we were newspaper men and artists and as such entitled to courtesies from the police, which the thick-soled minion of the law would occasionally admit. Sometimes we would go to Dick’s room or mine and chatter and sing until dawn, when, somewhat subdued, we would seek out some German saloon-keeper whom either Peter or Wood knew, rouse him out of his slumbers and demand that he come down and supply us with ham and eggs and beer.
My stage critical work having vivified my desire to write a play or comic opera on the order of _Wang_ or _The Isle of Champagne_, two of the reigning successes of that day, or the pleasing _Robin Hood_ of de Koven, I set about this task as best I might, scribbling scenes, bits of humor, phases of character. In this idea I was aided and abetted not only by Wood and McCord, both of whom by now seemed to think I might do something, but by the fact that the atmosphere of the _Globe_ office, as well as of St. Louis itself, was, for me at least, inspirational and creative. I liked the world in which I now found myself. There were about me and in the city so many who seemed destined to do great things—Wood, McCord, Hazard, a man by the name of Bennett who was engaged in sociologic propaganda of one kind and another, William Marion Reedy, already editing the _Mirror_, Albert Johnson, a most brilliant reporter who had, preceding my coming, resigned from the _Globe_ and gone over to the _Chronicle_, Alfred Robyn, composer of _Answer_ and _Marizanillo_, one of whose operas was even then being given a local tryout. I have mentioned the wonderful W. C. Brann who preceded me in writing “Heard in the Corridors” and who later stirred America with the _Iconoclast_.