house on the corner of Main and Elm, with
Schroeder's drug store occupying the first floor. Opera never came
within three hundred miles of Wapello, unless it was the so-called
comic kind. It was before the day of the ubiquitous moving-picture
theatre that has since been the undoing of the one-night stand
and the ten-twenty-thirty stock company. The old red-brick opera
house furnished unlimited thrills for Josie and her mother. From
the time Josie was seven she was taken to see whatever Wapello was
offered in the way of the drama. That consisted mostly of plays of the
tell-me-more-about-me-mother type.

By the time she was ten she knew the whole repertoire of the Maude La
Vergne Stock Company by heart. She was _blase_ with "East Lynne" and
"The Two Orphans," and even "Camille" left her cold. She was as wise to
the trade tricks as is a New York first nighter. She would sit there in
the darkened auditorium of a Saturday afternoon, surveying the stage
with a judicious and undeceived eye, as she sucked indefatigably at a
lollipop extracted from the sticky bag clutched in one moist palm. (A
bag of candy to each and every girl; a ball or a top to each and every
boy!) Josie knew that the middle-aged _soubrette_ who came out between
the first and second acts to sing a gingham-and-sunbonnet song would
whisk off to reappear immediately in knee-length pink satin and curls.
When the heroine left home in a shawl and a sudden snowstorm that
followed her upstage and stopped when she went off, Josie was
interested, but undeceived. She knew that the surprised-looking white
horse used in the Civil War comedy-drama entitled "His Southern
Sweetheart" came from Joe Brink's livery stable in exchange for four
passes, and that the faithful old negro servitor in the white cotton wig
would save somebody from something before the afternoon was over.

In was inevitable that as Josie grew older she should take part in
home-talent plays. It was one of these tinsel affairs that had made
clear to her just where her future lay. The Wapello _Daily Courier_
helped her in her decision. She had taken the part of a gipsy queen,
appropriately costumed in slightly soiled white satin slippers with
four-inch heels, and a white satin dress enhanced by a red sash, a black
velvet bolero, and large hoop earrings. She had danced and sung with a
pert confidence, and the _Courier_ had pronounced her talents not
amateur, but professional, and had advised the managers (