tied to the Indian wife when the way was clear
for him otherwise to go back home.

The next morning he told his wife--Selena Fetter--of the scheme, adding
that he thought of making a play out of it.

"Oh, don't," she begged him. "Can't you think of something pleasanter? You
know 'Friends' gained all its success out of the comedy there was in it."

So he did nothing in the matter then, but later, when he was asked to
write a skit for the Lambs' Gambol, he used this idea for a short piece,
which went so well that it was used afterward at the annual public gambol,
where it repeated its hit.

Royle was now in vaudeville, having cut down "Captain Impudence" to the
required time limits. He decided to follow this with "The Squaw Man," and
here is where once more his good luck in the guise of bad stepped upon the
scene.

A Fortunate Rejection.

The vaudeville managers refused positively to consider a sketch containing
more than four people; Royle could not cut "The Squaw Man" to fewer than
ten. Had either he or they given way, the four-act play that has proved
one of the big New York hits of the season might have remained a sketch
and spent its life on the road, instead of tarrying for six months on
Broadway.

In this deadlock it occurred to Royle that he would expand the play and
try it in a new field, but even after this was done he failed to find a
purchaser. Nat Goodwin, to whom he sent it first, turned it down, and
Charles Frohman could not read it within the time limit set.

But Royle had active agents in his brother actors, who had seen the thing
in its Lambs' Club performance, and who were all anxious to play the
leading part. Whenever they got the chance they spoke of the piece to
their respective managers, and in this way Royle finally got four of these
gentlemen to consent to listen to a reading of the play. The result was
the purchase of the rights by Mr. Tyler, of the Liebler Company, on terms
which have netted Mr. Royle royalties amounting close to a thousand
dollars a week.

HOPPER WAS AN "ANGEL."

The Tall Comedian Exchanged His Inheritance
for a Bowl of Thespian Pottage,
but Doesn't Regret It.

De Wolf Hopper's father was a Philadelphia lawyer, and it was intended
that Will (his real name) should follow in the paternal footsteps so far
as his career was concerned. And, by the way, more men have turned away
from the sheepskin to the footlights than from any other one vocation.
Reckon the