f the child wonders under ten years of age.
And ten years ago our hero was the M. Lobel Company, cloak and suit
jobbers in rather an inconspicuous Eastern town.

What was true of him as regards his comparatively recent advent into the
producing and distributing fields was true of his major associates.
Back in 1911 the vice president and second in command, Mr. F. X.
Quinlan, moved upward into a struggling infantile industry via the
stepping-stone of what in the vernacular of his former calling is known
as a mitt joint--summers at Coney, winters in store pitches--where he
guided the professional destinies of Madame Zaharat, the Egyptian
seeress, in private, then as now, Mrs. F. X. Quinlan nee Clardy.

The treasurer and secretary, Mr. Simeon Geltfin, had once upon a time
been proprietor of the Ne Plus Ultra Misfit Clothing Parlors at Utica,
New York, a place where secondhand habiliments, scoured and ironed,
dangled luringly in show windows bearing such enticing labels as
"Tailor's Sample--Nobby--$9.80," "Bargain--Take Me Home For $5.60," and
"These Trousers Were Uncalled For--$2.75."

The premier director, Mr. Bertram Colfax, numbered not one but two
chrysalis changes in his career. In the grub stage, as it were, he had
begun life as Lemuel Sims, a very grubby grub indeed, becoming Colfax at
the same time he became property man for a repertoire troupe playing
county-fair weeks in the Middle West.

As for the scenario editor and continuity writer, he in a prior
condition of life had solicited advertisements for a trade journal. So
it went right down the line.

At the time of the beginning of this narrative Lobel Masterfilms, Inc.,
had attained an eminence of what might be called fair-to-medium
prominence in the moving-picture field. In other words, it now was able
to pay its stars salaries running up into the multiples of tens of
thousands of dollars a year and the bank which carried its paper had not
yet felt justified in installing a chartered accountant in the home
offices to check the finances and collect the interest on the loans
outstanding. Before reaching this position the concern had passed
through nearly all the customary intervening stages. Nearly a decade
rearward, back in the dark ages of the filmic cosmos, the Jurassic
Period of pictures, so to speak, this little group of pathfinders
tracking under the chieftainship of Mr. Lobel into almost uncharted
wilds of artistic endeavor had dabbled in slap-stick on