Page:Micheaux - The Conquest, The Story of a Negro Pioneer (1913).djvu/255

 of her going away and taking up an immoral life instead of remaining pure and returning later to her husband. The husband, as the play goes, had not been a bad man and was unhappy throughout the play, and I argued this with Orlean all the way home. Why did she not remain good and when she returned he could have gathered her into his arms and "lived happy ever after." Not only my fiancee but most other women I have talked with about the play contend that he could have taken her back when she returned and been good to her. The man who wrote the play may have been a tragedian but the management that put it on the road knew a money-maker and kept it there as long as the people patronized the box office.

The next play we attended suited me better as, to my mind, it possessed all that "Madam X" lacked and, instead of weakness and an unhappy ending, this was one of strength of character and a happy finale. It was "The Fourth Estate," by Joseph Medill Patterson, who served his apprenticeship in writing on the Chicago Tribune. It was a newspaper play and its interest centered around one Wheeler Brand, who, through the purchase of a big city daily by a western man, with the bigness to hand out the truth regardless of the threats of the big advertisers, becomes managing editor. He relentlessly goes after one Judge Barteling whose "rotten" decisions had but sufficed to help "big business" and without regard to their effect upon the poor. The one really square decision was recalled before it took effect. To complicate matters the young editor loves the judge's