e tapped impatiently on the pavement with a cheap
little cane. His attitude was one of general discouragement, which was
not surprising, seeing that after playing Shakespeare in the one-night
stands all season, he found himself stranded on Broadway without a
cent. While he confided his troubles to his old friend, Jim Weston, he
cast envious glances at other fellow actors, more fortunate than he,
who were entering a red-curtained chop house close by. As his olfactory
organ caught the delicious odors of grilling steaks and juicy roasts,
he winced. That morning he had breakfasted but meagerly, and when again
the hunger pangs seized him there would be no chop house for him. He
must slink into the little dairy round the corner and lining-up at the
lunch counter, together with a dozen other thespians in like straits,
shamefacedly order a glass of milk and piece of pie.

"Do you think it's any merrier for me?" exclaimed Weston, after he had
listened to the other's hard-luck story. "Why, man alive, I'm ready to
give up. I've tramped Broadway for nine weeks, until every flagstone
gives me the laugh when it sees my feet coming. It's something fierce!"

Jim Weston was only one of the many hundred human derelicts cast away
on the theatrical strand. An advance agent of the old school, he found
himself at the age of fifty outdistanced by younger and more active
men. In the three decades of his life, which he had devoted to the
service of the stage, he had seen the gradual evolution of the
theatrical business. The old-time circus and minstrel men had been
pushed aside and younger men, more up-to-date in their methods, had
taken their place. Jim realized that he was a back number, but he hung
on just the same. He was too old now to begin learning a new trade. He
had given all the energy of his youth to the service of the theatre and
now he was older and not so active the theatre had gone back on him.
Often he had thought of ending it all, there and then, but that he
mused, was the coward's way. There was the "missis" and the "kids." He
wasn't going to desert them. So day after day, he kept on tramping
Broadway, haunting the agencies, in the hope of something turning up.

His companion, absorbed in his own gloomy reflections, tapped the
pavement nervously with his cane, and Weston continued:

"Got a letter from the missis this morning. The kids got to have more
clothes, there's measles in the town and mumps in the next village.
I've