temperamental,
highly strung Russian (it is in Volume VIII. of Edgar Sheepmeadow's
"Beds and their Inmates" that he relates the story of Chuggski's
desertion of Gretchen; he contends that he left her because she always
slept with her mouth open).

Her last and most famous lover on and off the stage was the
aforementioned Fritz Schnotter; he is treated lavishly in three volumes
of Bottiburgen.

Her portrait on page 100 is a reproduction of Grobmeyer's etching. The
original could formerly be viewed, I believe, by applying to the Kaiser
for permission and paying 18,000 marks.

JAKE D'ANNUNZIO SPOUT

[Illustration: JAKE D'ANNUNZIO SPOUT, WORLD-FAMED WRITER]

Why is it that to some are vouchsafed such supreme gifts while other
have perforce to drag out their lives in the hideous monotony of offices
and banks and the like?

Jake D'Annunzio Spout--even he, Jake the glorious--Spout the
magnificent--commenced his career behind the counter of a delicatessen
on Ninth Avenue--and now--his name and glory have waved across America
like a pennon of victory. I do not intend as others have done to
describe every small detail of his early life[17]--I merely wish with a
few brief and decided strokes of the pen to expose to the public his
mastery of psychology, his exquisite grace of style and above all his
amazing supremacy of grammar. No writer since Steve Montespan Pligger
has achieved such stupendous feats of literature and even
he--Pligger--failed over his well-remembered attack on an English
Duchess, "The Fall of a Bloated Aristocrat." According to contemporary
criticisms it appears that through lack of familiarity with his subject
he was unable to make her bloated enough--which was a pity as the main
bulk of the book was intensely interesting, but Pligger, great as he
undoubtedly was, could never aspire to the heights of Spout. Many people
on reading Spout's first volume of poems in prose "Autumn in my Garden"
were heard to say with a shake of the head, "Pligger's sun has set, we
are at the Dawn of a new Era--the Spout Era!" Perhaps the greatest
factor in Spout's greatness is his amazing versatility. No one reading
"Marie of Chinatown" for the first time would believe the author capable
of "Across the Sound for a Wife"! The realistic sordidity of the former
balanced against the breathless adventure of the latter, combine in
stamping Spout as a genius of the highest order.

The three books he wrote while still workin