s right. Or all of them. Sid Hahn, erstwhile usher, call
boy, press agent, advance man, had a genius for things theatrical. It
was inborn. Dramatic, sensitive, artistic, intuitive, he was often
rendered inarticulate by the very force and variety of his feelings. A
little, rotund, ugly man, Sid Hahn, with the eyes of a dreamer, the
wide, mobile mouth of a humourist, the ears of a comic ol'-clo'es man.
His generosity was proverbial, and it amounted to a vice.

In September he had come to Atlantic City to try out "Splendour." It was
a doubtful play, by a new author, starring Sarah Haddon for the first
time. No one dreamed the play would run for years, make a fortune for
Hahn, lift Haddon from obscurity to the dizziest heights of stardom, and
become a classic of the stage.

Ten minutes before the curtain went up on the opening performance Hahn
was stricken with appendicitis. There was not even time to rush him to
New York. He was on the operating table before the second act was
begun. When he came out of the ether he said: "How did it go?"

"Fine!" beamed the nurse. "You'll be out in two weeks."

"Oh, hell! I don't mean the operation. I mean the play."

He learned soon enough from the glowing, starry-eyed Sarah Haddon and
from every one connected with the play. He insisted on seeing them all
daily, against his doctor's orders, and succeeded in working up a
temperature that made his hospital stay a four weeks' affair. He refused
to take the tryout results as final.

"Don't be too bubbly about this thing," he cautioned Sarah Haddon. "I've
seen too many plays that were skyrockets on the road come down like
sticks when they struck New York."

The company stayed over in Atlantic City for a week, and Hahn held
scraps of rehearsals in his room when he had a temperature of 102. Sarah
Haddon worked like a slave. She seemed to realise that her great
opportunity had come--the opportunity for which hundreds of gifted
actresses wait a lifetime. Haddon was just twenty-eight then--a year
younger than Josie Fifer. She had not yet blossomed into the full
radiance of her beauty. She was too slender, and inclined to stoop a
bit, but her eyes were glorious, her skin petal-smooth, her whole face
reminding one, somehow, of an intelligent flower. Her voice was a
golden, liquid delight.

Josie Fifer, dragging herself from bed to chair, and from chair to bed,
used to watch for her. Hahn's room was on her floor. Sarah Haddon, in
her youth a