The author of that charming
fantasy, _The Passing of the Third Floor Back_, was long ago guilty of a
play named _The Rise of Dick Halward_, chiefly memorable for having
elicited from Mr. Bernard Shaw one of the most brilliant pages in
English dramatic criticism. The hero of this play, after an adventurous
youth in Mexico, has gone to the bar, but gets no briefs, and is
therefore unable to marry a lady who announces that no suitor need apply
who has less than L5000 a year. One fine day Dick receives from Mexico
the will of an old comrade, which purports to leave to him, absolutely,
half a million dollars, gold; but the will is accompanied by a letter,
in which the old comrade states that the property is really left to him
only in trust for the testator's long-lost son, whom Dick is enjoined to
search out and endow with a capital which, at 5 per cent, represents
accurately the desiderated L5000 a year. As a matter of fact (but this
is not to our present purpose), the long-lost son is actually, at that
moment, sharing Dick's chambers in the Temple.
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