owing color of the sky and
broke them into jewels; and beyond that silvery curtain of haze stretched
the great city of my dreams, all circled round and guarded by living
waters.

Then I was ashore again and clambering into the great swaying coach of
the Fifth Avenue Hotel, the conductor having told me it was right next
door to the theatre. I breakfasted, took from my bag a new gray veil, a
pair of gray gloves, a bit of fresh ruffling, and a needle and thread,
with which I basted the ruffle into the neck of my gown; put on the veil
and gloves, that being all the preparation I could make by way of toilet
to meet the arbiter of Fate, said "Our Father," and coming to "Amen" with
a jerk, discovered I had not been conscious of the meaning of one single
word, and whispering with shame, "only lip service," remorsefully
repeated again, and with absolute sincerity, that prayer which expresses
so simply, so briefly, all our needs, physical and spiritual; that places
us at once in the comforting position of a beloved child asking with
confidence for a father's aid. A prayer whose beauty and strength share
in the immortality of its Divine composer.

And then I rose and went forth, prepared to accept success or defeat,
just as the good Lord should will.

As I passed around the hotel and approached the theatre on Twenty-fourth
Street, an enormous upheaval of ice blocked the way--ice piled shoulder
high in front of the theatre door, and on one side of the glittering mass
stood a long, tall, thin man, as mad as a hornet, while on the other
side, stolidly, stupidly silent, stood a squat Irishman, holding an
ice-man's tongs in one hand and his shock of red hair in the other. The
long, flail-like arms of the tall man were in wild motion. In righteous
wrath he was trying to make the bog-trotter understand that the ice was
for the hotel, whose storage door was but a few feet to his right, when
he saw me making chamois-like jumps over the blocks of ice trying to
reach the door. With black-browed courtesy he told me to use the second
door, that morning, to reach the box-office.

I had, all unconsciously, formed an idea of Mr. Daly, and I was looking
for a small, dark, very dark, nervously irritable man, and was therefore
frankly amused at the wrath of the long, thin man, whose vest and whose
trousers could not agree as to the exact location of the waist-line, and
laughed openly at the ice-scene, winning in return as black a scowl as
any st