When the movies were young (1925)

Back Home Again 179 Griffith's beautiful sleep, nearly saw the end of tabletipping. Retiring early after a hard day David was awakened by noisy festivities downstairs, and getting good and mad about it he rapped a shoe on the floor. The group on occult demonstration bent, thinking how wonderfully their spooks were working, instead of quieting down became hilarious. The morning found them much less optimistic about spirit rapping. We did an Irish story of the days when the harp rang through Tara's Hall — the famous "Wilful Peggy" — in which pretty Mary never looked prettier nor acted more wilfully. But the something that had happened to Mary since our first visits to Cuddebackville made her a different Mary now. One day we were idling over by the Canal bank when, with the most wistful expression and in the most wistful tone, Mary spoke, "You know, Mrs. Griffith, I used to think this canal was the most beautiful place I'd ever seen, and now it just seems to me like a dirty, muddy stream." What had happened to her love's young dream to so change the scenery for her? Early that fall we went to Mount Beacon to do an Indian picture. The hotel on the mountain top had been closed, but we dug up the owner and he reopened parts of the place. At night we slid down the mountainside in the incline railway car to the village of Fishkill where we dined and slept at a regular city hotel. We nearly froze on that mountain top. Playing Indians, wrapped up in warm Indian blankets, and thus draped picturesquely on the mountainside, saved us. Mrs. Smith, not yet Pickford, did an Indian squaw in this picture, which