ed some four hundred dollars came
to him and offered to settle the claim for one hundred dollars. Frohman
said he did not believe in taking advantage of a man like that. He
advanced the actor one hundred dollars, and eventually paid the other
three hundred dollars.

* * *

Like every great man, Frohman's tastes were simple. He always wore
clothes of one pattern, and the style seldom varied. He wore no jewelry
except a Napoleonic ring on his little finger.

* * *

Frohman never married. A friend once asked him why he had chosen to be a
bachelor.

"My dear fellow," he answered, "had I possessed a wife and family I
could never have taken the risks which, as a theatrical manager, I am
constantly called upon to do."

He lived, in truth, for and by the theater; it was his world. His heart
was in his profession, and no enterprise was too daring, no venture too
perilous, to prevent him from boldly facing it if he believed the step
was expected of him.

* * *

To his intimates Frohman was always known as "C. F." These were the
magic initials that opened or shut the doors to theatrical fame and
fortune.

* * *

Frohman loved sweet things to eat. Pies were his particular fondness,
and he never traveled without a box of candy. As he read plays he
munched chocolates. He ate with a sort of Johnsonian avidity. When he
went to Europe some of his friends, who knew his tastes well, sent him
crates of pies instead of flowers or books.

He shared this fondness for sweets with Clyde Fitch. They did not dare
to eat as much pastry as they liked before others, so they often retired
to Frohman's rooms at Sherry's or to Fitch's house on Fortieth Street,
in New York, and had a dessert orgy.

Frohman almost invariably ate as he worked in his office. When people
saw sandwiches piled upon his table, he would say:

"A rehearsal accompanied by a sandwich is progress, but a rehearsal
interrupted by a meal is delay."

* * *

Frohman's letters to his intimates were characteristic. He always wrote
them with a blue pencil, and on whatever scrap of paper happened to be
at hand. Often it was a sheet of yellow scratch-paper, sometimes the
back of an envelope. He wrote as he talked, in quick, epigrammatic
sentences. Like Barrie, he wrote one of the most indecipherable of
hands. Frequently, instead of a note, he drew a picture to express a
sentiment or convey an invitation. One reason for this was that the man
saw all life in terms of the