It was his first successful play, and is a primary example of a melodrama, best known for its suspense scene where a person is tied to railroad tracks as a train approaches, only to be saved from death at the last possible moment.

[5] In the book Vagrant Memories, critic William Winter recalls how Daly came up with the device: "He was walking home toward night, thinking intently about the play which he had begun to write, when suddenly the crowning expedient occurred to him and at the same instant he stumbled over a misplaced flagstone, striking his right foot against the edge of the stone and sustaining a severe hurt.

'I was near my door,' he said, 'and I rushed into the house, threw myself into a chair, grasping my injured foot with both hands, for the pain was great, and exclaiming, over and over again, "I've got it!

I had the thought of having my hero tied on a railroad track and rescued by his sweetheart, just in the nick of time, before the swift passage of an express train across a dark stage.

[1] Daly was able to successfully get an injunction against Dion Boucicault over his 1868 play After Dark, which also had a train scene, a case that became an important decision in copyright law.