the Madison Square Theater.
From that he drifted to other small parts in the company of Edwin Booth,
while the latter was at the Fifth Avenue Theater, and the next season he
was with Booth and Barrett during their engagement at the Broadway.

Short on Words.

"You can imagine the nature of my roles," said Mr. Royle, in relating to
me this portion of his career, "by the following incident: At the end of
the season it was decided to bring out a souvenir of the engagement, with
signatures by all the people in the company. Each signature was to be
accompanied by a line from his or her part. When it came my turn to write,
my part was so short that all I had to say in the piece went down as my
contribution, in the shape of--

"'Oh, Caesar! No, by no means!'"

And here began the apparent strokes of ill luck which in the end have
proved blessings in disguise. The first one was the failure of Mrs. Potter
to come to this country for a tour on one occasion when Royle had been
engaged in her support. He did not know that he was free until September,
when it was too late to seek other positions.

Thrown out of a job, he turned his attention to playwriting, having at one
time thought seriously of taking up literature as a profession. He wrote
"Friends," and brought it out in New York the next summer, with a capital
furnished by a Western uncle.

The play made a hit after a rather slow start, and he played it on the
road for some seasons, following it with another, "Captain Impudence," and
later by a farce, "My Wife's Husbands." The latter made a decided hit, but
Mr. Royle was unable to obtain road bookings for it owing to a glut of
attractions kept out of New York by the unfinished condition of two
theaters which should have been ready for them. Shows booked for them,
with companies all engaged, had to be placed somewhere pending the
completion of the Lyceum and the Hudson, so that the dates were all filled
by the time it was known that "My Wife's Husbands" had caught on. In this
crisis, Nat Goodwin, who had just come a cropper with a new offering of
his own, rose up and bought the rights to the play, but failed to make
good in the part himself and shelved it after two weeks' trial.

Meanwhile, one night when he couldn't sleep, Royle got to thinking about
the Indians he used to see when a boy at the Indian reservation not far
from Salt Lake. And then there formed in his mind the germ idea of "The
Squaw Man"--the Englishman