This is the melodrama that originated the suspenseful situation of the hero placed unconscious on a log while the mill machinery—an enormous rotating buzz saw—is set in motion to cut him in half. Joseph Arthur wrote the hit that opened on 6 October 1890 and ran for 176 performances at the Fourteenth Street Theatre. Set in the Indiana village of Rising Sun, the slight piece was praised in the New York Times (7 October 1890) as "the first play treating of Hoosier life" with "personages and scenes evidently studied from nature." Jennie Yeamans proved an engaging ingénue who rescues the hero in the thrilling buzz-saw scene.
The Historical Dictionary of the American Theater. James Fisher.