"No," replied Frohman. "Warn the sharks."

* * *

Some years ago Frohman sent a young actor named John Brennan out on the
road in the South in "Too Much Johnson." Brennan was a Southerner, and
he believed that he could do a big business in his home country. Frohman
then went to London, and, when playing hearts at the Savoy one night
with Dillingham, a page brought a cablegram. It was from Brennan,
saying:

_Unless I get two hundred dollars by next Saturday night I can't
close._

Whereupon Frohman wired him:

_Keep going._

Frohman delighted to play jokes on his close friends. In 1900,
Dillingham opened the New Jersey Academy of Music with Julia Marlowe,
and it was a big event. This was before the day of the tubes under the
Hudson connecting New Jersey and New York. When Dillingham went down to
the ferry to cross over for the opening night he found a basket of
flowers from Frohman marked, "Bon voyage."

* * *

Nor could Frohman be lacking in the graceful reply. During a return
engagement of "The Man from Mexico," in the Garrick Theater, William
Collier became very ill with erysipelas and had to go to a hospital.
The day the engagement was resumed happened to be Frohman's birthday,
and Collier sent him the following cablegram:

_Many happy returns from all your box offices._

He received the following answer from Frohman:

_My happiest return is your return to the Garrick._

Behind all of Frohman's jest and humor was a serious outlook on life. It
was mixed with big philosophy, too, as this incident will show:

He was visiting Sir George Alexander at his country house in Kent.
Alexander, who is a great dog fancier, asked Frohman to accompany him
while he chained up his animals. Frohman watched the performance with
great interest. Then he turned to the actor-manager and said:

"I have got a lot of dogs out at my country place in America, but I
never tie them up."

"Why?" asked Alexander.

"Let other people tie up the dogs. You let them out and they will always
like you."

* * *

Frohman was known to his friends as a master of epigram. Some of his
distinctive sayings are these:

"The best seat at a theater is the paid one."

"An ounce of imagination is worth a pound of practicality."

"The man who makes up his mind to corner things generally gets
cornered."

"You cannot monopolize theaters while there are bricks and mortar."

"When I hear of another theater being b