ments begin about the first Monday
in June and end about the last Saturday in August. Calls are sent out
about the middle of April for summer work, and about the middle of
July for the winter or regular season. If you are able to qualify, you
will get the benefit of these calls for dancers, and when you go with
my recommendation, it will be only to the best managers.

I will inform you fully as to the best forms of contract for you to
sign in every case, and make no charge for this. You know, when you
engage to go with a show, you do not simply take the manager's word
for it that he will employ you for so many weeks at so much a week,
nor does the manager simply take your "Yes, I'll come," and let it go
at that. This matter of entering his employ is a business affair, a
transaction of importance to you both, and calls for a signed
agreement that binds him, the manager, as to his responsibility to
you, and binds you as to your duties to him. It is a legal document,
binding on both parties, the manager and you--and let me tell you
right here, you feel mighty big with your first stage contract duly
signed and delivered, and in your pocket, and while you may in future
seasons get contracts that specify much larger salaries than your
first one does, no contract will ever _seem_ so big and important to
you as this first one, the start, the goal of your ambition. I love to
see my pupils with their first professional contracts! They are so
happy and hopeful; the world opens up new delights for them; they
have arrived. The reward of their untiring exertions here in the
courses is at hand, and they have earned it and deserved it. "Good for
you!" I feel like saying; and I am truly happy to think that I have
been in some degree instrumental in bringing this about.

My experience has been paid for. I have learned to profit by my own
mistakes, and I can and will save you all the risk in closing deals
that involve so much--perhaps your entire future stage career. I can
and will do this, if you let me.

[Illustration]

STAGE-CRAFT

[Illustration]

When my pupils become professional dancers and "sign up" for their
first stage engagement they will wish not to be or appear ignorant of
the marvelous mechanism that is the modern theatrical stage. Not that
they will learn it all from any book, but my knowledge of things back
stage will be of help, and I have jotted down here some of them for
that purpose. The rest of it the n