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SHOWMAN
ment world that, whoever wins in the end, it's a good idea to impress it on your professional confreres that picking on you means a fight to the finish. Compared with the great Mr. Daly, with his low, impressive voice and aristocratic bearing, I was an upstart pigmy, a barnstorming sharpshooter trying to crash New York with a pirated manuscript. But it took thirteen years and thousands of dollars to finish that fight. Twice we took it to the United States Supreme Court and twice the court slapped us down, deciding that the locomotive and a character tied to the track being rescued in the nick of time in "After Dark" was a "colorable imitation" of the business in "Under the Gaslight." The whole thing stood or fell by that two-minute scene. We combed the dramatic literature of Europe and America to find a play which had something like that before 1866, when "Under the Gaslight" was written. Daly was an old hand at lifting things himself, so it was by no means unlikely that there was some such original to break his case with. But it didn't turn up. In the end Daly got a judgment for $61,000. But the statute of limitations spared me from having to pay more than $6,000. Licked though I was, I'd made an important contribution to the development of the copyright law. That case is still one of the standard precedents, always quoted and referred to. And every time I hear of it, I get mad all over again.
By a queer trick of law, however, I am now owner of "After Dark," free of impediments. That goes back
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