cardboard about H. & L.!
Josie Fifer could recall the scenes in a play, step by step from noting
with her keen eye the marks left on costume after costume by the ravages
of emotion. At the end of a play's run she would hold up a dress for
critical inspection, turning it this way and that.

"This is the dress she wore in her big scene at the end of the second
act where she crawls on her knees to her wronged husband and pounds on
the door and weeps. She certainly did give it some hard wear. When
Marriott crawls she crawls, and when she bawls she bawls. I'll say that
for her. From the looks of this front breadth she must have worn a
groove in the stage at the York."

No gently sentimental reason caused Hahn & Lohman to house these
hundreds of costumes, these tons of scenery, these forests of furniture.
Neither had Josie Fifer been hired to walk wistfully among them like a
spinster wandering in a dead rose garden. No, they were stored for a
much thriftier reason. They were stored, if you must know, for possible
future use. H. & L. were too clever not to use a last year's costume for
a this year's road show. They knew what a coat of enamel would do for a
bedroom set. It was Josie Fifer's duty not only to tabulate and care for
these relics, but to refurbish them when necessary. The sewing was done
by a little corps of assistants under Josie's direction.

But all this came with the years. When Josie Fifer, white and weak,
first took charge of the H. & L. _lares et penates_, she told herself it
was only for a few months--a year or two at most. The end of sixteen
years found her still there.

When she came to New York, "Splendour" was just beginning its phenomenal
three years' run. The city was mad about the play. People came to see
it again and again--a sure sign of a long run. The Sarah Haddon second-act
costume was photographed, copied (unsuccessfully), talked about, until
it became as familiar as a uniform. That costume had much to do
with the play's success, though Sarah Haddon would never admit it.
"Splendour" was what is known as a period play. The famous dress was of
black velvet, made with a quaint, full-gathered skirt that made Haddon's
slim waist seem fairylike and exquisitely supple. The black velvet
bodice outlined the delicate swell of the bust. A rope of pearls
enhanced the whiteness of her throat. Her hair, done in old-time
scallops about her forehead, was a gleaming marvel of simplicity, and
the despair of