aviour of the fortune-teller
and he said, if she were short and stout, he had the very actress in
his mind.

But it was in the second act that he threw caution to the winds. As
you will know presently, Red Joe--one of my pirates--seizes his trusty
gun and, taking breathless aim, shoots--But I must not expose my plot.
At this exciting moment (which is quite the climax of my play)
Belasco--or any of his kind--would have squinted for a flaw. He would
have tilted his wary nose upon the ceiling and told me that my plot
was humbug. What sailorman would mistake a lantern for a lighthouse?
Nor were there lighthouses in the days of the buccaneers. He would
have scuttled my play in dock and grinned at the rising bubbles. Mark
the difference! My manager, ignoring these inconsequential errors,
burst from his chair--this is amazing!--and turned a reckless
somersault between the table and the fire.

His costumer, who knows best how his eccentricity runs to riot,
checked him for this and sent him to his chair. He sobered for a
minute and the play went on. Presently, however, when the enraged
pirates gathered to wreak vengeance on their victim, I saw how deeply
he was moved. His exultant eye sought the bookshelves, and I fancy
that he was in meditation whether he might be allowed a handstand with
his heels waving against the ceiling. His excited fingers obviously
were searching for a dagger in his boot.

You may conceive my pleasure. If his cold and practiced judgment could
be so stirred, might I not hope that the phlegmatic pit in shiny
shirt-fronts would rise and shout its approval at our opening? And to
what reckless license might not the gallery yield? I fancied a burst
of somersaults in the upper gloom, and tremendous handsprings--both
men and women--down the sharp-pitched aisle. It would be
shocking--this giddy flash of lingerie--except that our broader times
now give it countenance. Peeping Tom, late of Coventry, in these more
generous days need no longer sit like a sneak at his private shutter.
He has only to travel to the beach where a hundred Godivas crowd the
sands. I saw myself on the great occasion of our opening night bowing
in white tie from the forward box.

Our conference was successful. When the reading of the play was
finished and the wicked pirates stood in the shadow of the gibbet, he
thanked me and excused himself from further attendance by reason of a
prior engagement. Under the stress of selection for his t