th cooked
foods--"How about some hot coffee, Merton?"

He became an able producer of this drama. He devised a hundred
sympathetic little touches that Henshaw would probably never have
thought of. He used footage on a mere platter of steak that another
director might have ignored utterly. He made it gripping--the supreme
heart-interest drama of his season a big thing done in a big way, and
yet censor-proof. Not even the white-souled censors of the great state
of Pennsylvania could have outlawed its realism, brutal though this was
in such great moments as when Gashwiler carved the roast beef. So able
was his artistry that Merton's nostrils would sometimes betray him--he
could swear they caught rich aromas from that distant board.

Not only had the fare purveyed by his favourite pharmacy put a blight
upon him equal to Broadway's blight, but even of this tasteless stuff he
must be cautious in his buying. A sandwich, not too meaty at the centre,
coffee tasting strangely of other things sold in a pharmacy, a segment
of pie fair--seeming on its surface, but lacking the punch, as he put
it, of Metta Judson's pie, a standardized, factory-made, altogether
formal and perfunctory pie--these were the meagre items of his
accustomed luncheon and dinner.

He had abandoned breakfast, partly because it cost money and partly
because a gentleman in eastern Ohio had recently celebrated his hundred
and third birthday by reason, so he confided to the press, of having
always breakfasted upon a glass of clear cold water. Probably ham and
eggs or corned--beef hash would have cut him off at ninety, and water
from the tap in the Patterson kitchen was both clear and cold. It was
not so much that he cared to live beyond ninety or so, but he wished to
survive until things began to pick up on the Holden lot, and if this did
bring him many more years, well and good. Further, if the woman in the
casting office persisted, as she had for ten days, in saying "Nothing
yet" to inquiring screen artists, he might be compelled to intensify the
regime of the Ohio centenarian. Perhaps a glass of clear cold water at
night, after a hearty midday meal of drug--store sandwiches and pie,
would work new wonders.

It seemed to be the present opinion of other waiters on the extra bench
that things were never going to pick up on the Holden lot nor on any
other lot. Strongly marked types, ready to add distinction to the screen
of painted shadows, freely expressed a vie