By the time she was ten she knew the whole repertoire of the Maude La Vergne Stock Company by heart.  She was blase with “East Lynne” and “The Two Orphans,” and even “Camille” left her cold.  She was as wise to the trade tricks as is a New York first nighter.  She would sit there in the darkened auditorium of a Saturday afternoon, surveying the stage with a judicious and undeceived eye, as she sucked indefatigably at a lollipop extracted from the sticky bag clutched in one moist palm. (A bag of candy to each and every girl; a ball or a top to each and every boy!) Josie knew that the middle-aged soubrette who came out between the first and second acts to sing a gingham-and-sunbonnet song would whisk off to reappear immediately in knee-length pink satin and curls.  When the heroine left home in a shawl and a sudden snowstorm that followed her upstage and stopped when she went off, Josie was interested, but undeceived.  She knew that the surprised-looking white horse used in the Civil War comedy-drama entitled “His Southern Sweetheart” came from Joe Brink’s livery stable in exchange for four passes, and that the faithful old negro servitor in the white cotton wig would save somebody from something before the afternoon was over.

In was inevitable that as Josie grew older she should take part in home-talent plays.  It was one of these tinsel affairs that had made clear to her just where her future lay.  The Wapello Daily Courier helped her in her decision.  She had taken the part of a gipsy queen, appropriately costumed in slightly soiled white satin slippers with four-inch heels, and a white satin dress enhanced by a red sash, a black velvet bolero, and large hoop earrings.  She had danced and sung with a pert confidence, and the Courier had pronounced her talents not amateur, but professional, and had advised the managers (who, no doubt, read the Wapello Courier daily, along with their Morning Telegraph) to seek her out, and speedily.

Josie didn’t wait for them to take the hint.  She sought them out instead.  There followed seven tawdry, hard-working, heartbreaking years.  Supe, walk-on, stock, musical comedy—­Josie went through them all.  If any illusions about the stage had survived her Wapello days, they would have vanished in the first six months of her dramatic career.  By the time she was twenty-four she had acquired the wisdom of fifty, a near-seal coat, a turquoise ring with a number of smoky-looking crushed diamonds surrounding it, and a reputation for wit and for decency.  The last had cost the most.

During all these years of cheap theatrical boarding houses (the most soul-searing cheapness in the world), of one-night stands, of insult, disappointment, rebuff, and something that often came perilously near to want, Josie Fifer managed to retain a certain humorous outlook on life.  There was something whimsical about it.  She could even see a joke on herself.  When she first signed her name Jose Fyfer, for example, she did it with, an appreciative giggle and a glint in her eye as she formed the accent mark over the e.