stern
representative of all his extensive Pacific coast interests.

Hayman was developing into a magnate of importance. With his assistance
Charles was able to book a company all the way from New York to San
Francisco. Charles made himself responsible for the time between New
York and Kansas City, while Hayman would guarantee the company's time
from Kansas City or Omaha to the coast.

Frohman and Randall made a good team, and they soon acquired a chain of
more than three hundred theaters, ranging from music-halls in small
towns that booked the ten-twenty-thirty-cent dramas up to the palatial
houses like Hooley's in Chicago, the Hollis in Boston, and the Baldwin
in San Francisco.

It was a happy-go-lucky time. If Frohman had ten dollars in his pocket
to spare he considered himself rich. Money then, as always, meant very
little to him. It came and went easily.

* * *

While the booking business waxed in volume the production end of the
establishment did not fare so well. Charles had this activity of the
office as his particular domain, and with the instinct of the plunger
now began to put on plays right and left.

Just before the association with Randall, Frohman had become manager of
Neil Burgess, the actor, and had booked him for a tour in a play called
"Vim." A disagreement followed, and Frohman turned him over to George W.
Lederer, who took the play out to the coast.

A year after this episode came the first of the many opportunities for
fortune that Charles Frohman turned down in the course of his eventful
life. This is the way it happened:

Burgess, who was quite an inventive person, had patented the treadmill
mechanism to represent horse-racing on the stage, a device which was
afterward used with such great effect in "Ben-Hur." He was so much
impressed with it that he had a play written around it called "The
County Fair."

Burgess, who liked Frohman immensely, tried to get him to take charge of
this piece, but Frohman would not listen to the proposition about the
mechanical device. He was unhappy over his experience about "Vim," and
whenever Burgess tried to talk "The County Fair" and its machine Frohman
would put him off.

Burgess finally went elsewhere, and, as most people know, "The County
Fair" almost rivaled "The Old Homestead" in money-making ability. The
horse-racing scene became the most-talked-of episode on the stage at the
time, and Burgess cleared more than a quarter of a million dollars out