be something in which I could appeal to
the public through the medium of the voice.

"I thought of law for a while, then had a hankering after politics.
Finally I drifted into the line of impersonations through monologues.

"I have been working on the drama of 'Lincoln' for years. The version I
am doing is by no means the only one I have written around the war-time
President, but it seemed to be the one, all things considered, best
adapted for the stage."

For the past half-dozen years Mr. Chapin has been all over the country on
the lecture platform, but he has by no means confined himself to Lincoln.
He has impersonated, among others, Rip Van Winkle and Cyrano de Bergerac.
He has great ambitions in the direction of playwriting.

"I have discovered," he told me in this connection, "that if a play does
not elicit from its audience over two hundred distinct expressions of
approval, in the shape either of laughs, applause, or that almost
imperceptible stir of expectancy, it is a failure."

WELFORD MIXED WRITS.

If the English Actor Had Been Less
Careless as a Law Clerk, He Would
Not Have Been "Mr. Hopkinson."

When the year 1906 began, American playgoers had never heard of an actor
by the name of Dallas Welford. Before Easter all New York was applauding
his work as the unconscionable little bounder in the title role of R.C.
Carton's English farce, "Mr. Hopkinson."

In order to obtain for THE SCRAP BOOK some facts, at first hand,
concerning his early life, I interviewed him in his dressing-room one
afternoon after a matinee. And dressing, with him, is a very simple
process, as he uses no make-up at all, and consequently does not have to
give his face a bath of cold cream after the play in order to take the
grease-paint off.

In fact, so simple are his preparations for the street that he once went
out to dinner with a friend forgetting to remove the tiny false mustache
which is all the concession to the mummer's mask he makes in fitting
himself to the character of the Cockney tradesman who has come into money.

"How did I start?" he said, in answer to my query. "Well, you see, in one
sense I did not need an introduction to the stage, or what you call
'pull,' because my mother was an actress, and as a kid I went on in the
inevitable way as the _Duke of York_ in 'Richard III,' besides being the
perennial _Little Willie_ in 'East Lynne.'

"I remember, too, that I was the child in your 'Danites' when it was