fortunate associate. To his friend, who perhaps saw things in a
prejudiced light, it seemed like a conspiracy to make good the dramatic
agent's word of promise--to keep it to the ear and break it to the hope.


THE YOUNG MAN'S MONEY WAS GONE,

he was in debt for three weeks' board, and he had been ruthlessly and
ignominiously branded with failure. He reverted to Brutus at Philippi,
to Cato, and he was nearly on the verge of suicide. It may be that the
cheering words of his friend brought out his true but latent courage.
What were a troop of vulgar and ill-mannered players to him? What was a
dramatic agent but a harpy? He was worth a whole theatre full of actors
such as had worked almost his ruin. Go back and put his nose down to the
grindstone, his desk, where, at least they paid men enough to live on,
and did not make it necessary to cheat a poor landlady!


JEREMY COLLIER

has said that "true courage is the result of reasoning. Resolution lies
more in the head than in the veins, and a just sense of honor and of
infamy, of duty and religion, will carry us farther than all the force
of mechanism." The young man had the courage to go back. His friend was
gratified. As the months passed the bitterness departed. Christmas Day
the young man was sent to the Stock Yards to do a week's-reporting. That
Christmas-week was one of the coldest ever seen in this climate. The
young man's unweathered ears and nose were badly frost-bitten. But
notwithstanding this great obstacle of a cold snap he made a success of
his expedition. His reports demonstrated that the Bible and Plutarch