that were making money if they played to thirty-two dollars on the day
just naturally died. Me? You know I wasn't hep to the outlook. I come
prancing into town fresh from doing one-night stands through the
uncultured West. We did bum business for fair, but shucks, there ain't
five dollars' worth of real money in all of Southern Kansas at no time.
Salaries! Huh! I had to send home for money to pay my fines with. I
cavort gaily out to hunt a job and find a line from Mr. Seymour's office
that made the run on the Knickerbocker Trust Company look like the
nightly window sale of 'The Evangelist.' I never seen so many of my
friends in town at one time in my life, and if you make a noise like a
dollar-bill anywhere between the two Flatirons you're liable to be the
center of a raging mob. I heard it breathed that all the theatrical
storehouses in town were playing to S.R.O.

"I got a chance to shake down a little change as prima donna with a
turkey show. What do you know about that? I played with one last
Thanksgiving, and--excuse these tears--it was a college town and the
show was on the blink. 'Nough said. The manager hasn't left there yet.

"Oh, Listerine, have you heard the news? Alia McGraw has turned poetess.
You know she always was peculiar. I was visiting her the other evening
in her dressing room when she declared that she was going to give up her
dramatic art and go to painting word pictures. Whatever they are. You
see it was this way: She had a boob on her staff who was paying her his
devoted attention. According to her statistics that's all he ever did
pay for. Well, he commenced doing advance work about a present he was
going to give her until he got poor Alla to thinking that it was nothing
less than an automobile, and she treated him accordingly. One morning a
messenger boy makes his entrance into the flat and hands her a book. Can
you beat that? The only thing that kept Alia from foaming at the mouth