-stairs, and as they reached the top step Blanche
called to a small, dark man who was hurrying across the hall:

"Oh, Mr. Ellsler--wait a moment, please--I want to speak to you."

The man stopped, but with an impatient frown, for as he himself
afterward said in relating the story:

"I was much put out about a business matter, and was hastily crossing
the corridor when Blanche called me, and I saw she had another girl in
tow, a girl whose appearance in a theater was so droll I must have
laughed had I not been more than a little cross. Her dress was quite
short--she wore a pale-blue apron buttoned up the back, long braids
tied at the ends with ribbons, and a brown straw hat, while she
clutched desperately at the handle of the biggest umbrella I ever saw.
Her eyes were distinctly blue and big with fright. Blanche gave her
name, and said she wanted to go in the ballet. I instantly answered
that she was too small--I wanted women, not children. Blanche was
voluble, but the girl herself never spoke a single word. I glanced
toward her and stopped. The hands that clutched the umbrella
trembled--she raised her eyes and looked at me. I had noticed their
blueness a moment before, now they were almost black, so swiftly had
their pupils dilated, and slowly the tears rose in them. All the
father in me shrank under the child's bitter disappointment; all the
actor in me thrilled at the power of expression in the girl's face,
and I hastily added:

"'Oh, well, you may come back in a day or two, and if any one appears
meantime who is short enough to march with you, I'll take you on.' Not
until I had reached my office did I remember that the girl had not
spoken a single word, but had won an engagement--for I knew I should
engage her--with a pair of tear-filled eyes."

As a result of his half-promise, three days later, the young person
again presented herself at the theater, and was engaged for the term
of two weeks to go on the stage in the marches and dances of a play
called "The Seven Sisters," for which she was to receive the large sum
of fifty cents a night. She, who was later to be known as one of the
great emotional actresses of her day, whose name was to be on every
lip where the finest in dramatic art was appreciated, had begun to
mount the ladder toward fame and fortune.

Very curiously and cautiously she picked her way around the stage at
first, looking at the scenes, so fine on one side, so bare and cheap
on the other; at