Will went about with me on my visits to various managers. He encouraged me in my intention and I was glad to interest him, to take him out of himself, as it were. His run of hard luck had preyed on his nerves and frayed his temper. There was reason for me to suspect he was drinking more than was good for him. Finally there came an offer of a small part in a musical comedy which had settled down for a run in New York. The fact that I was possessed of no great amount of vocal equipment did not preclude me from the field. The manager intimated that what I lacked in voice I made up in pulchritude, though I recall he referred to it as "shape." The salary was to be thirty-five dollars a week. The gowns were furnished--those worn by my predecessor--though I was called upon to supply my own shoes, silk hose and gloves. In reality I was to be nothing more than a show-girl, with a few lines to speak.
Will was in front the night I made my début. After the performance we went to a restaurant, there to talk it over. Congratulating me on my "getting away with it" and telling me how "peachy" I looked, he laughingly predicted a line of Johnnies at the stage door, flowers, and the usual perquisites of the chorus girl.... "If you weren't wise to the game, I'd give you a few pointers," he said, ... "but" ... and here he reached across the table and patted me on the hands.... "I reckon you're equal to any situation, old pard.... Just sit tight until I again land on my feet and then you can cut it out, if you like."
I did not find myself subjected to any fierce onslaughts on the part of the Johnnies or _viveurs_ about town. Once or twice I received a note accompanied with flowers. The former I destroyed; the latter I promptly presented to the least pretty of my five dressing-room mates. She wore them on the stage and made eyes at the donor, who occupied an upper box, much to my amusement and to his confusion. I discouraged intimacies of all kinds, with one exception. But of this more hereafter. The stage director never attempted to chuck me under the chin or call me "baby," as he did other members of the cast. I had had my little run-in with him at rehearsal when he essayed to yell at me after the manner of his kind. I stopped short, the orchestra petered out in discord and, walking to the apron of the stage, I modulated my voice, so that it reached him quietly but effectively, where he stood in the back of the theatre. "Mr. M----," I had said, "if you have any further suggestion to offer, you will please do so in a less offensive manner. My hearing is good and I believe I have the average amount of intelligence." There was an ominous silence and the martinet started down the aisle. Behind me I heard a buzz of approbation from the girls who had suffered at his hands. Just why the bully changed his mind I never knew. At any rate the rehearsal was continued. Later the manager chaffed me about the incident. The manager was an undeveloped little person--as if some hereditary blight had nipped him in the bud--distinctly Semitic in all his traits. Will had known him from the time he had abandoned haberdashery for theatrical management; indeed, I believe he had been a member of the manager's first venture into the field.