"You are young, me child," said one of the boys in a burlesque, fatherly fashion. "You have much. to learn."

With rising anger, I blurted out, "I should have thought some of you men would have stopped him." Oh most unfortunate exclamation! I realized that night, when I laid my weary head on my pillow and gently cried myself to sleep, that we had been together five days, chummy good fellows, but I was to be forever, from this time on, an unpopular girl among my associates because of that fatal remark. For on going home after rehearsal, the doors of the corner café swung open as I passed, and ranged along the front of the bar in the deepest of conviviality, were "the boys" and this ogre of a stage manager who but a few minutes before, had been consigning us all to the lower regions. He had certainly lost none of their respect by this exhibition of temper nor were they any the less his friends for causing such an outbreak. "But," I thought, in my green-horn way, "if he drinks with them, how can he expect them to be subservient?" I could hardly see a general standing on such a footing with his men and expecting to keep discipline.

CHAPTER II.

ON THE ROAD.

We opened, or had our first performance, in Troy, N. Y., a one-night stand, I was informed, to try the company and get the rough edges off the play and acting. The manager was with us to see how we compared with the original, or metropolitan, organization, which made our task, I think, even doubly hard as comparisons are always more or less odious.

Yet the nervousness and excitement of that "first night" were simply exhilarating. The effect was only analogous to the first plunge of the season into the sea, or a child's feeling of being in peril yet with a strong hand leading it, an unexplainable fear and tremulous emotion, but with it all, still, a sense of security and hope.

It seemed to me that Miss Melloweye ought to have been the happiest woman in the world to have so charming a role; to be able to look so pretty; and to be so applauded and rewarded for her performance with bouquets of roses until her dressing-room became a veritable bower of posies. Everything was hubbub and excitement, but to nie the actors played as if inspired.

Success seemed in the very air, as call after call was the compensation for the endeavor of each act. Mr. Nevermind, the leading man, apparently outdid himself. Mr. Littleman was a success from start to finish. I plunged in and said my three speeches with what was, to me, gusto enough to take the roof off the house. How I made my extra girls come up in the "shouts," and how we did romp that village dance! Work? Why, we were actually aglow with the physical exertion we were going through, and we really labored as if we each individually owned that "show" and it was our money which was to be lost if it didn't "make good." You see I was already becoming accustomed to the vernacular, so that it was easy to express myself as the older professionals did.

Never have I seen a more finished, more artistic bit of work than that done by Mrs. Biber, a truly splendid artist who had received her training in Europe. Mr. Softlee, also, showed what association with the best artists will do towards the development of talent, as I soon learned he numbered among his very youthful engagements many with the so-called "good old timers," now gone to a happier "play house," let us hope. It was to me a supreme pleasure to watch such artists from the wings, and I frankly confess I missed not one of their scenes (although I noticed that I was the only one who took such an interest in the work of the other members of the company), and it was almost an æsthetic joy that rebounded over my excited nerves as I listened to

the laughter and applause which was wafted to us from the great auditorium in apparently sympathetic response to the machinery of which we were turning the wheels. "To make that great throng laugh, weep, feel, live with one," the sensation was little less than sublime.

The first night was a festival truly, and when the manager called us together at the end of the play, panting, muscle weary, yet jubilant, and proud, we assembled on the stage.

He waited even after we were all in a more or less straight line and looked us all over in a most embarrassing pause; evidently to make sure we were each and every one attentive; then his piping twang and irritating voice came shrilly through his nose: "Ladies and gentlemen! that was positively the

rottenest performance I ever had the misfortune to see of this piece. If I couldn't run a theatre any better than you can act, I'd shoot myself for taking money under false pretenses. You all saw the original company. Why don't you try to imitate if you haven't any ability of your own?" Warming up, he addressed himself to the leading lady. "Stella Melloweye," he whined, "I engaged you for this part because I supposed you to be a good dresser. Where in the name of the good Lord did you get those rags you had on to-night? (Her dresses had cost over one thousand dollars, but that was a detail.) "On Grand Street I'll bet.

but they were rotten! See if you can't get somebody in Chicago to fix 'em up a bit."

The leading man next was the "rottenest he had ever seen at the price." "Call yourself a high salaried man indeed!" The comedian likewise received comment, and all down the line, even to me who "really, for a beginner, showed about as much promise as a small black kitten." We were all collectively and individually, "Rotten! ROTTEN! ROTTEN!" until I found myself vaguely spelling the odious thing, and if by any chance, he had hesitated, I felt that to prompt him with that one word would have started him right in almost any sentence he might have been forming.

Mr. Temper (who by the way stood meekly near his employer, never daring to utter a word) was directed to rehearse us every day of our Chicago engagement, which was to be our first week stand; "that is, if the city allowed us to play out the time allotted to us," a most sarcastic suggestion; and we were dismissed. Wilted and crestfallen, we shrank away to our respective dressing rooms ashamed to look one another in the face, and when we had removed the paint and trappings which had done their share to make us so "ROTTEN," as in Miss Melloweye's case, we wandered listlessly, weary in body and spirit, to the uninviting hotel which the road actor needs must call "home."

I had cherished a secret hope, while we were rehearsing in New York, that once we were traveling