exasperation. GIRL and
MAN have been fighting like Kilkenny cats. Yesterday she said,
"Dearie, God is my witness, he uses me like I was the dirt under his
feet!" The brother of BROTHER, a lean, clean-looking chap, lounges
about at rehearsals and comforts me vastly with his under-the-breath
comments on them. She has worked up the bit before THE MAN arrives,
when she is pretending, you remember, into screaming comedy. She
assures me it will "knock 'em dead!" And they have introduced a
dance! Yes. He shows her "the coyote lope." I'm telling you the
solemn truth, Sarah Farraday. Do you wonder that I'm an old woman
before my time?

And as if I did not have enough to annoy me, Michael Daragh has been
quite superfluously unpleasant about it. I wrote you how much he
liked it when I read the original 'script to him? Well, he has kept
talking about the glorious privilege of doing really good work and
leavening the lump, and of how the public really wants the best, only
the managers haven't faith to know it, and when I had to tell him
about the changes,--the comedy and the dance and so on, he just
looked at me and looked at me as if I were a lost soul. It was very
tiresome.

"Good gracious, Michael Daragh," I said, "you don't suppose I like
it, do you? But I've got to get my foothold. You can't be high-brow
in the two-a-day, it seems. You've got to capitulate. It's simply
what they call 'putting it over.'"

And he said, "I should be calling it 'putting it under,'" and stalked
away.

Excuse a cross letter. So am I.

J.

P.S. Just for which, I won't even tell him when or where the tryout
is to be.

_Thursday Night._

Well, my dear, they say it went fairly well. But it was absolutely
the most harrowing thing I ever had to bear. BROTHER was a gem but
GIRL and MAN messed up their lines and gave an alien interpretation
to everything. How I hated the audience for roaring at her common
comedy! They howled with delight when she pushed BROTHER over, and
the coyote lope got the biggest hand of the day. I was behind the
scenes, holding the 'script. Oh, but it's a grim land of disillusion
back there! As she came off she gave me a kindly pat and said--

"Ain't they eatin' it up? Say, girlie, didn't I tell you I'd put the
raisin in it?"

Unbelievably, heaven alone kno