rises, falls, rises, and then sinks again asbestos and all, and the play
is over. The lights are on, the audience rises in a body and puts on its
wraps. All over the theater you can hear the words "perfectly rotten,"
"utterly untrue," and so on. The general judgment seems to be that it is
a perfectly rotten play, but very strong.

They are saying this as they surge out in great waves of furs and
silks, with black crush hats floating on billows of white wraps among
the foam of gossamer scarfs. Through it all is the squawk of the motor
horn, the call of the taxi numbers and the inrush of the fresh night
air.

But just inside the theater, in the office, is a man in a circus
waistcoat adding up dollars with a blue pencil, and he knows that the
play is all right.

[Illustration: He takes her in his arms.]

_FAMILIAR INCIDENTS_

_I.--With the Photographer_

"I WANT my photograph taken," I said. The photographer looked at me
without enthusiasm. He was a drooping man in a gray suit, with the dim
eye of a natural scientist. But there is no need to describe him.
Everybody knows what a photographer is like.

"Sit there," he said, "and wait."

I waited an hour. I read the _Ladies Companion_ for 1912, the _Girls
Magazine_ for 1902 and the _Infants Journal_ for 1888. I began to see
that I had done an unwarrantable thing in breaking in on the privacy of
this man's scientific pursuits with a face like mine.

After an hour the photographer opened the inner door.

"Come in," he said severely.

I went into the studio.

"Sit down," said the photographer.

I sat down in a beam of sunlight filtered through a sheet of factory
cotton hung against a frosted skylight.

The photographer rolled a machine into the middle of the room and
crawled into it from behind.

He was only in it a second,--just time enough for one look at me,--and
then he was out again, tearing at the cotton sheet and the window panes
with a hooked stick, apparently frantic for light and air.

Then he crawled back into the machine again and drew a little black
cloth over himself. This time he was very quiet in there. I knew that he
was praying and I kept still.

When the photographer came out at last, he looked very grave and shook
his head.

"The face is quite wrong," he said.

"I know," I answered quietly; "I have always known it."

He sighed.

"I think," he said, "the face would be better three-quarters full."

"I'm sure it would,