The star-Wagon, a play in three acts

The scene is a small city in Ohio, and the chief characters are Stephen Minch, an inventor who works for the joy of inventing; his wife, Martha; and his assistant, Hanus Wicks. For thirty years the Minch family has lived uneventfully in the same city, and Hanus has lived with them. Their routine existence is blasted by a marvelous invention of Stephen’s, through which various characters can return to their youth, and there enact not only what really happened, but also what might have been. The old bicycle shop, seen in 1902; the wonder and skepticism of people at the “horseless buggy"; the picnic by the lake and the choir practice scene in the church—carry one back into the romantic past. Finally, Stephen, Martha and Hanus return to the present wiser, richer in experience and more happily adjusted than before.