me," he explains.

He is still remembered in that office, fondly but fearfully. He did his
work well enough; in fact, there are those who insist that he invented
scientific management.

"How about that?" I asked him, for it puzzled me.

"Well, you see, it was this way: For five days in a week I would say,
'Quite so' to my assistant, no matter what he suggested. On Saturday I
would dash into the manager's office, wag my head, knit my brow, and
exclaim, 'What we need around here is _efficiency_.' And once I urged
the purchase of a time-clock."

The way he filled his spare time was what bothered. What with his
tumbling tricks, boxing, wrestling, leap-frog over chairs, and other
small gaieties, he mussed up routine to a certain extent. But he was
_not_ discharged. At a point where the firm was just one jump ahead of
nervous prostration, along came "Jack" Beardsley and "Little" Owen, two
husky football players with a desire to see life without the safety
clutch.

The three approached the officials of a cattle-steamship, and by
persistent claims to the effect that they "had a way" with dumb
animals, got jobs as hay stewards.

"We found the cows very nice," comments Mr. Fairbanks. "No one can get
me to say a word against them. But those stokers! And those other
stable-maids! Pow! We had to fight 'em from one end of the voyage to the
other, and it got so that I bit myself in my sleep. The three of us got
eight shillings apiece when we landed at Liverpool, and tickets back,
but there were several little things about Europe that bothered us, and
we thought we'd see what the trouble was."

They "hoboed" it through England, France, and Belgium, working at any
old job until they gathered money enough to move along, whether it was
carrying water to English navvies or unloading paving-blocks from a
Seine boat. After three joyous months, they felt the call of the cattle,
and came home on another steamer.

Back on his native heath, young Fairbanks took a shot from the hip at
law, but missed. Then he got a job in a machine-manufacturing plant,
but one day he found that his carelessness had permitted fifty dollars
to accumulate, and he breezed down to Cuba and Yucatan to see what
openings there were for capital. Back from that tramping trip, he
figured that since he had not annoyed the stage for some time it
certainly owed him something.

His return to the drama took place in "The Rose of Plymouth Town," a
play in which Miss