long before that a plantation hand in Bermuda, until he stuck an
eight-inch stiletto in his master's back. Almost before Carlyle
realized his good fortune he was on Broadway, with offers of
engagements on all sides, and more money than he had ever dreamed
of.

It was about then that a change began in his whole attitude, a
rather curious, embittering change. It was when he realized that
he was spending the golden years of his life gibbering round a
stage with a lot of black men. His act was good of its
kind--three trombones, three saxaphones, and Carlyle's flute--and
it was his own peculiar sense of rhythm that made all the
difference; but he began to grow strangely sensitive about it,
began to hate the thought of appearing, dreaded it from day to
day.

They were making money--each contract he signed called for
more--but when he went to managers and told them that he wanted
to separate from his sextet and go on as a regular pianist, they
laughed at him aud told him he was crazy--it would he an artistic
suicide. He used to laugh afterward at the phrase "artistic
suicide." They all used it.

Half a dozen times they played at private dances at three
thousand dollars a night, and it seemed as if these crystallized
all his distaste for his mode of livlihood. They took place in
clubs and houses that he couldn't have gone into in the daytime
After all, he was merely playing to role of the eternal monkey, a
sort of sublimated chorus man. He was sick of the very smell of
the theatre, of powder and rouge and the chatter of the