To everyone who spoke to me of the matter, I
simply answered: "Oh, that will be all right." When the second day came I
was the last to present myself at the box-office window. Mr. Ellsler was
there and he opened the door and asked me to come in. As I signed my name
on the salary list I hesitated perceptibly and he laughingly said: "Don't
you know your own name?" Now on the first day of all, when the
stage-manager had taken down our names, I had been gazing at the scenery
and when he called out: "Little girl, what is your name?" I had not
heard, and someone standing by had said: "Her name is Clara--Clara
Morris, or Morrisey, or Morrison, or something like that," and he dropped
the last syllable from my name Morrison, and wrote me down Morris; so
when Mr. Ellsler put his question, "Don't you know your name?" that was
certainly the moment when I should have spoken--but I was too shy, and
there and thereafter held my peace, and have been in consequence Clara
Morris ever since.

I having signed for and received my two weeks' salary, Mr. Ellsler asked
why I had not come the week before, and I told him I preferred to wait
because it would seem so much more if I got both weeks' salary all at one
time. And he gravely nodded and said "it was rather a large sum to have
in hand at one time"--and, though I was very sensitive to ridicule, I did
not suspect him of making fun of me.

Then he said: "You are a very intelligent little girl, and when you went
on alone and unrehearsed the other night you proved you had both
adaptability and courage. I'd like to keep you in the theatre. Will you
come and be a regular member of the company for the season that begins in
September next?"

I think it must have been my ears that finally stopped my ever-widening
smile while I made answer that I must ask my mother first.

"To be sure," said he, "to be sure! Well, suppose you ask her, then, and
let me know whether you can or not."

Looking back and speaking calmly, I must admit that I do not now believe
that Mr. Ellsler's financial future depended entirely upon the yes or no
of my mother and myself; but that I was on an errand of life or death
everyone must have thought who saw me tearing through the streets on that
90-in-the-shade summer day, racing along in a whirl of short skirts, with
the boyish, self-kicking gait peculiar to running girls of thirteen.

One man, a tailor, ran out hatless and coatless and looked up the street
anxiously in t