f that, our first meeting, as he has given it
often since. He says: "I was much put out by a business matter and was
hastily crossing the corridor when Blanche called me, and I saw she had
another girl in tow; a girl whose appearance in a theatre was so droll I
must have laughed, had I not been more than a little cross. Her dress was
quite short--she wore a pale-blue apron buttoned up the back, long braids
tied at the ends with ribbon, and a brown straw hat, while she clutched
desperately at the handle of the biggest umbrella I ever saw. Her eyes
were distinctly blue and were plainly big with fright. Blanche gave her
name and said she wanted to go on in the ballet, and I instantly answered
she would not do, she was too small--I wanted women, not children, and
started to return to my office. Blanche was voluble, but the girl herself
never spoke a single word. I glanced toward her and stopped. The hands
that clutched the umbrella trembled--she raised her eyes and looked at
me. I had noticed their blueness a moment before--now they were almost
black, so swiftly had the pupils dilated, and slowly the tears rose in
them. All the father in me shrank under the child's bitter
disappointment; all the actor in me thrilled at the power of expression
in the girl's face, and I hastily added: 'Oh, well! You may come back in
a day or two, and if anyone appears meantime who is short enough to march
with you I'll take you on,' and after I got to my office I remembered the
girl had not spoken a single word, but had won an engagement--for I knew
I should engage her--with a pair of tear-filled eyes."

The following Tuesday, under the protection of the ever-faithful Blanche,
I again presented myself and was engaged for the term of two weeks, to go
on the stage in the marches and dances of a play called "The Seven
Sisters," for which service I was to receive three dollars a week, or
fifty cents a night, as there were no matinees then, and so I entered,
with wide-astonished eyes, into that dim, dusty, chaotic place known as
"behind the scenes"--a strange place, where nothing _is_ and everything
_may be_.

In the daytime I found the stage a thing dead--at night, with the blazing
of the gas, it lived! for light is its life, music is its soul, and the
play its brain.

Silently and cautiously I walked about, gazing curiously at the "scenes,"
so fine on one side, so bare and cheap on the other; at the tarlatan
"glass windows"; at the green "cali