an?" he asked.

He was told it was Charles Frohman.

A few days later he received a letter from Frohman, which said:

_Your play lacks all form and construction, but I like the lines
very much. Would you like to adapt a French farce for me?_

Dillingham accepted this commission and thus met Frohman. Dillingham was
then dramatic editor of the New York _Evening Sun_. One day he called on
Frohman and asked him to send him out with a show.

"When do you want to go?"

"Right away."

"Very well," said Frohman, who would always have his little joke. "You
can go to-morrow. I would like to get you off that paper, anyhow. You
write too many bad notices of my plays."

Dillingham first went out ahead of the Empire Stock Company and
afterward in advance of John Drew, in "That Imprudent Young Couple." He
left the job, however, and soon returned to Frohman, seeking other work.

"What would you like to do?" asked Frohman.

"Take my yacht and go to England," said Dillingham, facetiously.

"All right," said Frohman. "We sail Saturday," and handed him fifty
thousand dollars in stage money that happened to be lying on his desk.
Dillingham thought at first he was joking, but he was not. They sailed
on the _St. Paul_. Frohman had just established his first offices in
Henrietta Street. There was not much business to transact, and the pair
spent most of their time seeing plays. Dillingham acted as a sort of
secretary to Frohman.

One day a haughty Englishman came up to the offices and asked Dillingham
to take in his card.

"I have no time," said Dillingham, whose sense of humor is proverbial.

"What have you to do?" asked the man.

"I've got to wash the office windows first," was the reply.

The Englishman became enraged, strode in to Frohman, and told him what
Dillingham had said. Frohman laughed so heartily that he almost rolled
out of his chair. After the Englishman left he went out and
congratulated Dillingham on his jest. From that day dated a Damon and
Pythias friendship between the two men. They were almost inseparable
companions.

The time was at hand for another big star to twinkle in the Frohman
heaven. During all these years William Gillette had developed in
prestige and authority, both as actor and as playwright. The quiet,
thoughtful, scholarly-looking young actor who had knocked at the doors
of the Madison Square Theater with the manuscript of "The Professor,"
where it was produced after "Hazel Kirk