own the line from the manager who wants us to try his
new motor-car to the bill-posters who want to call us by our front
names.

"And the men we have to meet after the show are the worst of all. The
stage-door kind, and the manager's friends who take us to supper and
show their diamonds and talk about seeing 'Dan' and 'Dave' and
'Charlie' for us. They're beasts, and I hate 'em.

"I tell you, Lynn, it's the girls like us on the stage that ought to
be pitied. It's girls from good homes that are honestly ambitious and
work hard to rise in the profession, but never do get there. You hear
a lot of sympathy sloshed around on chorus girls and their fifteen
dollars a week. Piffle! There ain't a sorrow in the chorus that a
lobster cannot heal.

"If there's any tears to shed, let 'em fall for the actress that gets
a salary of from thirty to forty-five dollars a week for taking a
leading part in a bum show. She knows she'll never do any better; but
she hangs on for years, hoping for the 'chance' I that never comes.

"And the fool plays we have to work in! Having another girl roll you
around the stage by the hind legs in a 'Wheelbarrow Chorus' in a
musical comedy is dignified drama compared with the idiotic things
I've had to do in the thirty-centers.

"But what I hated most was the men--the men leering and blathering at
you across tables, trying to buy you with Wuerzburger or Extra Dry,
according to their estimate of your price. And the men in the
audiences, clapping, yelling, snarling, crowding, writhing,
gloating--like a lot of wild beasts, with their eyes fixed on you,
ready to eat you up if you come in reach of their claws. Oh, how I
hate 'em!

"Well, I'm not telling you much about myself, am I, Lynn?

"I had two hundred dollars saved up, and I cut the stage the first of
the summer. I went over on Long Island and found the sweetest little
village that ever was, called Soundport, right on the water. I was
going to spend the summer there, and study up on elocution, and try
to get a class in the fall. There was an old widow lady with a
cottage near the beach who sometimes rented a room or two just for
company, and she took me in. She had another boarder, too--the
Reverend Arthur Lyle.

"Yes, he was the head-liner. You're on, Lynn. I'll tell you all of it
in a minute. It's only a one-act play.

"The first time he walked on, Lynn, I felt myself going; the first
lines he spoke, he had me. He was different from the men in