nd she captured her audience almost with her first speech.

Charles Frohman sat nervously in the wings during the performance. When
the curtain went down his new star said to him:

"How did it go?"

"Splendidly," was his laconic comment.

"The Little Minister" ran at the Empire for three hundred consecutive
performances, two hundred and eighty-nine of which were to "standing
room only." The total gross receipts for the engagement were $370,000--a
record for that time.

On the last night of the run Miss Adams received the following cablegram
from Barrie:

_Thank you, thank you all for your brilliant achievement. "What a
glory to our kirk."_

BARRIE.

Maude Adams was now launched as a profitable and successful star. Like
many other conscientious and idealistic interpreters of the drama, she
had a great reverence for Shakespeare, and she burned with a desire to
play in one of the great bard's plays. Charles Frohman knew this. Then,
as always, one of his supreme ambitions in life was to gratify her every
wish, so he announced that he would present her in a special all-star
production of "Romeo and Juliet."

Charles Frohman himself was always frank enough to say that he had no
great desire to produce Shakespeare. He lived in the dramatic activities
of his day. It was shortly before this time that his brother Daniel,
entering his office one day, found him reading.

"I am reading a new book," he said; "that is, new to me."

"What is that?" was the query?

"'Romeo and Juliet,'" he replied.

When Maude Adams dropped the role of _Babbie_ to assume that of _Juliet_
some people thought the transfer a daring one, to say the least. Even
Miss Adams was a little nervous. Not so Frohman. To him Shakespeare was
simply a playwright like Clyde Fitch or Augustus Thomas, with the
additional advantage that he was dead, and therefore, as there were no
royalties to pay, he could put the money into the production.

When Frohman went to rehearsal one day he noticed that the company
seemed a trifle nervous.

"What's up?" he asked, abruptly.

Some one told him that the players were fearful lest all the details of
the costume and play should not be carried out in strict accordance with
history.

"Nonsense!" exclaimed Frohman. "Who's Shakespeare? He was just a man. He
won't hurt you. I don't see any Shakespeare. Just imagine you're looking
at a soldier, home from the Cuban war, making love to a giggling
school-gi