or John Raymond at about fifteen dollars a week.  The dramatic agent was to have ten dollars from the first week’s salary of the regular engagement.  As he was working at absolutely bottom figures (board usually costing at least six dollars a week) and as he was skillful at his business, and could command work at all times if he were willing to work for his board, the young man thought he was not very rash in making an attempt, and yet it seemed to the friend of the young man like the memorable jump of the fish out of the frying-pan.  The difficulty of going back to work after a failure was entirely overlooked.  The young man paid his twenty-five dollars, absolutely the frugal hoard of six months of toil, got a leave of absence for three weeks, and studied all one week, meanwhile eating five dollars’ worth of very poor board.

HE “ACTED” THROUGH THE WEEK

up to Thursday, when the company failed to pay in advance for the gas, and it was shut off.  He spent the next two or three days preparing himself for a part in “The Gilded Age.”  On the second night the “heavy man,” Raymond, became enraged at the manner in which this part was borne, and demanded that the character be given into the hands of another person.  This was the finishing stroke.  The young man stayed at “home” for three days, and on Friday night went to see his more fortunate associate.  To his friend, who perhaps saw things in a prejudiced light, it seemed like a conspiracy to make good the dramatic agent’s word of promise—­to keep it to the ear and break it to the hope.

THE YOUNG MAN’S MONEY WAS GONE,

he was in debt for three weeks’ board, and he had been ruthlessly and ignominiously branded with failure.  He reverted to Brutus at Philippi, to Cato, and he was nearly on the verge of suicide.  It may be that the cheering words of his friend brought out his true but latent courage.  What were a troop of vulgar and ill-mannered players to him?  What was a dramatic agent but a harpy?  He was worth a whole theatre full of actors such as had worked almost his ruin.  Go back and put his nose down to the grindstone, his desk, where, at least they paid men enough to live on, and did not make it necessary to cheat a poor landlady!

JEREMY COLLIER

has said that “true courage is the result of reasoning.  Resolution lies more in the head than in the veins, and a just sense of honor and of infamy, of duty and religion, will carry us farther than all the force of mechanism.”  The young man had the courage to go back.  His friend was gratified.  As the months passed the bitterness departed.  Christmas Day the young man was sent to the Stock Yards to do a week’s-reporting.  That Christmas-week was one of the coldest ever seen in this climate.  The young man’s unweathered ears and nose were badly frost-bitten.  But notwithstanding this great obstacle of a cold snap he made a success of his expedition.  His reports demonstrated that the Bible and Plutarch had not been sown on stony places, and that good English could be used in reporting the standing and prospects of a retail firm as well as in a memorial to Congress.  When he got back