“For instance?”

“Well, that the theatre was on fire.”

“But when he got there?”

“I’d have made him see it was a joke.”

“Maybe he hasn’t that kind of a sense of humour?”

“Then I should have perished bravely.”

So the incidents of their first day’s careering ended jocularly.

Bambi called Mr. Strong on the wire next day, and told him of Jarvis’s unprofitable sitting.  Could he get her a letter to Belasco?  Or to any other leading manager?  He laughed, said he did not know Belasco, but thought he could arrange it for her.  He promised to send a letter to the club.

With this assurance to fall back upon, she persuaded Jarvis to go to the office of one of the newer managers who seemed to be of an open mind in regard to untried playwrights.  She showed him a magazine article about this “live wire,” named over his productions, and repeated his cordial invitation to new writers.

Jarvis set forth reluctantly.  He liked salesman work as little as he had expected to.  But he felt he owed some effort to Bambi, since he was her guest, and her mind was so set on his success.

This time the cheeky-faced office boy admitted that the manager was in.  He accepted and scrutinized Jarvis’s card with disdain, but on his return from the inner office he ejaculated, “Wait!” So Jarvis sat down for his second endurance feat.  The same Johnnies and Billies and Fays came to this office in their endless seeking.  He began to vision the great, ceaseless army of them “making the rounds,” as they call it, often hungry and tired.  They were most of them uneducated, you could tell by their speech, for all their long “a’s” and short “r’s.”  That they were physically unadapted to the profession was obvious enough in many cases.  They were probably badly trained.  How did they live?  Where did they go?  They began to haunt him.

He was interrupted by hearing his name called.  He rose mechanically, and followed the boy into a very large and ornate office.  A fat Jewish man, in loud clothes, a brown derby hat, and a cigar, sat at a desk, dictating.

“H’are ye?” he ejaculated as Jarvis entered.  He went on dictating and smoking, until Jarvis finally interrupted him, saying he wanted to see the manager.  The fat man glared at him.

“Sit down until I get through!” he shouted.  “I’m the manager.”

Jarvis took a chair and looked at the man closely.  What would such a creature find in his play, with its roots in a modern condition, no more grasped by this man than by Professor Parkhurst?  The absurdity of the idea struck Jarvis so forcibly that he laughed out loud.

“Let’s have it, if it’s any good,” said the fat man.

“I beg your pardon,” Jarvis replied.

The manager dismissed the stenographer, took up Jarvis’s card, looked at it, and then at his victim.

“Jarvis Jocelyn,” he read.  “Good stage name.  What’s your line, Jarvis?”