ctions, yet she managed to convey embarrassment, fright, terror,
determination, decision in the agonized twisting of those expressive
feet.

Authors generally claimed these bits of business as having originated
with them. For that matter, she was a favourite with playwrights, as
well she might be, considering the vitality which she injected into
their hackneyed situations. Every little while some young writer, fired
by an inflection in her voice or a nuance in her comedy, would rush back
stage to tell her that she never had had a part worthy of her, and that
he would now come to her rescue. Sometimes he kept his word, and
Harrietta, six months later, would look up from the manuscript to say:
"This is delightful! It's what I've been looking for for years. The
deftness of the comedy. And that little scene with the gardener!"

But always, after the managers had finished suggesting bits that would
brighten it up, and changes that would put it over with the Western
buyers, Harrietta would regard the mutilated manuscript sorrowingly.
"But I can't play this now, you know. It isn't the same part at all.
It's--forgive me--vulgar."

Then some little red-haired ingenue would get it, and it would run a
solid year on Broadway and two seasons on the road, and in all that time
Harrietta would have played six months, perhaps, in three different
plays, in all of which she would score what is known as a "personal
success." A personal success usually means bad business at the box
office.

Now this is immensely significant. In the advertisements of the play in
which Harrietta Fuller might be appearing you never read:

HARRIETTA FULLER
In
Thus and So

No. It was always:

THUS AND SO
With
Harrietta Fuller

Between those two prepositions lies a whole theatrical world of
difference. The "In" means stardom; the "With" that the play is
considered more important than the cast.

Don't feel sorry for Harrietta Fuller. Thousands of women have envied
her; thousands of men admired, and several have loved her devotedly,
including her father, the Rev. H. John Scoville (deceased). The H.
stands for Harry. She was named for him, of course. When he entered the
church he was advised to drop his first name and use his second as being
more fitting in his position. But the outward change did not affect his
inner self. He remained more Harry than John to the last. It was from
him Harrietta got her acting sense, her humour, her intelli