new plays, new playwrights, new players, but he was not a great stage-director. He had an extraordinary intuitive faculty for pointing up rehearsals, italicizing the interpretation of a play, detecting the meanings hidden between as well as in its lines, pictorially underscoring its ideas, unmistakably bringing out what he always called "the soul of a play," working endlessly for the right exhibition of the internals of a manuscript, but caring little for its externals, rather disdaining scenery, costumes, lighting, or details of what is usually called atmosphere. He had inexhaustible patience with his people at rehearsals, especially with those who in the trying hours before a first performance were talking, suggesting, changing, and fussing over details not from intelligence, but from nerves or to disguise the fact that they did not know their lines. He would allow this over-particularizing to go on until its indulgence sufficiently steadied an actor or actress, then he would stop it by humorously saying:

"All right, now let 's hear some of the play. We know you can act, but nobody will expect acting of that sofa you 've been pushing about."

And to the actress who, after repeated stumbling, protested, "I know my lines, 'C. F.'," he finally answered, "Yes, I see you do, but you don't know Pinero's."

The difference between English and American audiences he once illustrated this way:

"If in a play that you 've imported from London a character says 'Battersea Bridge,' an American playgoer, although the name may sound queer to him, will instantly say: 'All right; Battersea Bridge. What about it?' But if you import an American play into London, and the character says 'Tammany corruption,' a British playgoer will say to himself, 'What kind of corruption is this?' and keep on saying it until he misses all that act and perhaps the next one."

He was happiest when dozens of plays were before the public in England or America under his name. Often he had as many as eight in rehearsal at the same

time, and his cheeks would flush with color and his eyes dance with delight as he rushed from theater to theater to rehearse an act here or an act there. A play once put before the public rarely, if ever, interested him after the first two or three nights of its run. But he was too charged with nervous force, too highly strung, too unmistakably touched with that restrained. madness which is the mark of genius to have any knack for detail. Whatever he did he could do only on a wholesale scale. He wanted as many stars under his management as he could get along with, as many authors writing plays for him as he could interest in ideas or plots or who could interest him, as many theaters under his management as his resources could possibly carry; and upon every printed form connected with his institution, upon the simplest folder or the most ordinary envelop, he ever insisted should be the inscription "Charles Frohman presents." A passion for greatness dominated him. It showed itself in odd ways. At spare moments he would snatch up paper and blue pencil and feverishly write, "Charles Frohman at the present time has the following stars playing under his management," and then set down the names of all his famous stars and every other name that could possibly be credited with past or future stardom. Every public announcement that he made began with his name, which he would utter as if it belonged to another than himself. Once he impatiently ordered thousands of envelops destroyed because they were imprinted with the name and picture of one of his stars, but not his name. He always wanted it felt that he was the one essential behind all his enterprises, and that but for him they could not be; and yet he would never step before an audience and hated to be recognized in public.

"You go before the curtain and make the speech," said Frohman to Belasco as they sat side by side behind the scenes on the opening night of "A Celebrated Case," while the theater was resounding with cries of "Speech!" "Go out front," said Frohman, "and act your hardest.

Be

sure and cry and put your hand on your heart; they expect it. I'm sure they imagine I'm out in the box-office counting up the filthy lucre." But when any of his projects that promised unusual honor as well as great financial results reacted on him and fell flat, nobody was quicker to see the humor of the recoil. His laughter was that of a boy; it would strike fire in the corners of his eyes, quickly ignite his ruddy face, and shake his enormous back.

"It was a good joke on me the night Granville Barker, who was then my stagedirector at the repertory theater I started in London, produced his play "The Madras House.' Barrie told me that it was going to be a very distinguished occasion; 'a proud night for me' was the way he put it. You know the way we both hate evening clothes, but since it was to be a proud night, Barrie and I dressed up within an inch of our lives, and were seated in the box of the Duke of York's several minutes before the curtain went up on the play. I was so eager to feel my pride that I crowded right up to the brass rail, getting myself in full view of the audience. Soon the play started; and then it went on and on and on-mile after mile of talk. At about half-past eleven Barrie said to me: 'I think I 'll be stepping round to the stage to say good evening to the people. I'll wait for you there after the play is over.' And he left me. Again 'The Madras House' went on and on and on. Toward twelve o'clock I heard, from 'way behind the stalls the most awful sound in life-booing. Louder and louder

it grew. Then I could hear indistinct mutterings about 'British workmen' and whether or not they meant to be slaves. This was followed by some things being broken at the back of the theater, and then you may be sure I pushed my chair out of sight of the audience and sat behind the curtains in the box, expecting the worst. There was a small-sized riot on hand when the curtain finally fell well toward one o'clock. Then I started to rejoin Barrie on the stage. As I went back my thought was how badly Barker

must feel over the fiasco of his play and the rudeness of his fellow-countrymen. I was eager to soften the blow for him all I could, so I worked my way through the crowd on the stage and started to tell him that everything would be all right and success would yet be his. But he was in a frenzy and stopped me before I could say a word, flinging his arms into the air and then his hands through his hair as he shouted: 'Frohman, what a catastrophe! Did a man ever have worse luck? What do you think happened? Ainley skipped eighteen pages of my play!' What a laugh Barrie and I had over that going home! If Ainley had not skipped those eighteen pages, we would all have been there till dawn. That was the last time I ever crowded to the front of a box in my own or anybody else's theater. You never can tell."

Charles Frohman was as enthusiastic over every new play as if it were his first or as if his career were starting afresh with the play just in hand. He came eagerly to his office every morning with a zest, a courageous readiness, an enthusiasm, optimism, a sure sense of unfailing resource for whatever might happen, fresh of eye, smiling of countenance, gentle of voice, as if he had been born new and stronger over night. "Anything new?" was one of his typical greetings; for it was always the new, to-day and to-morrow, that instantly engaged Frohman's imagination as he daily took his place before the old-fashioned table that long did him for a desk. And there those who loved him will always picture him, dreaming his dreams, piling Pelion on Ossa as he plans a universe of fantastically beautiful theaters, brilliantly lighted with the names of his idolized stars, his famous authors, and their yet more famous plays; always he will seem to be sitting there, glowing with delight from the thrill of one adventurous project after another, drinking deep of every phase of living drama, highly animated, yet so serene as to be capable of contemplating even death as "the most beautiful adventure in life."

CHAPTER I

AN IDOL'S SUCCESSOR

HE Articles of Confederation, under

TH
Twhich the Revolution was fought,

appear in retrospect more like a travesty on government than the deliberate, earnest work of reasoning men. The patriots of that day were too deeply moved by principles to see the absurdity of the means by which they sought to enforce them. Congress, the central authority during the Revolution, was allowed to impose taxes, but was forbidden to collect them. could declare war, but was powerless to enlist a soldier. And being made thoroughly helpless and penniless, it was required to pay armies it had no right to call into being. Comic operas, but not nations, flourish upon such foundations.

It

War's overshadowing concern held the different parts of the country together while it lasted, but true to the law which decrees that virtue shall ebb and flow in nations as in men, nature saw to it that peace was followed by speedy reaction. Intent upon reaping local benefits, the sections became quarrelsome neighbors, each clamoring in a different tongue for its own rights and privileges. The East talked of fisheries and timber; the South of tobacco and cotton; the opening West had needs and interests to which the others were deaf and blind. A few years of such discord brought the new country to a pass where it was equally difficult to keep order at home or treaties abroad. National finances, long precarious, reached the vanishing point, then disappeared. The army withered to a skeleton of fewer than a hun

dred men. Legislators, elected to the shadowy honor of seats in a Congress without real power, showed small interest in its meetings. It had been difficult to get together a quorum to ratify the treaty of peace with Great Britain. The attendance grew less and less; then only two members appeared; finally only one met with the clerk. That faithful officer wrote his last entry in the journal, closed the book, and without being formally adjourned, the Continental Congress also faded from sight.

The new nation seemed doomed to die of its own vital principle-liberty; but fear of disunion, or, rather, of the consequences of disunion, roused the States to their folly. Disunion meant almost certain reconquest by England, with the sacrifice of everything for which they had fought. Even before the shadowy Congress vanished into the land of ghosts, Virginia, leader among the States, asked that delegates be sent to a convention called to revise these Articles of Confederation under which time had proved that Americans could fight, but could not live peaceably together. With the exception of small, but truculent, Rhode Island, all responded, sending their best men, some of whom were already members of the old Congress. And this, it is only fair to say, accounted in part for its deserted halls and dwindling numbers.

As the delegates rode toward Philadelphia through the young green of mid-May, 1787, the country looked very fair-altogether too fair to be given up without. further struggle. They had three alternatives: disunion, more amiable and brotherly efforts at popular government, or an American monarchy. Europe, watching eagerly, would welcome this last as a confession of failure only less absolute than disunion itself. England and France stood ready to offer candidates from the house of Hanover and the house of Bourbon, their greed thinly veiled in assurances of friendship that were insults in disguise.

Of one thing these Americans were sure if it came to an American monarchy, they need not cross the sea to find a king.

A man of their own number had been tested in temper and strength for more than a decade through war and the more quarrelsome years of peace. It was his tact and common sense that had saved them time and again while they tried to live under the opera-bouffe provisions of the Articles of Confederation. Like themselves, he was now riding soberly toward Philadelphia. A crowd met him and escorted him into the city with public honors, and he was made chairman of the convention.

After the country decided that it was not yet ready to give up the experiment of popular government, he was elected President, and in due time, clad in his darkbrown suit of home manufacture, he took the oath of office, while prayers ascended and bells rang, and the budding Government put forth all the pomp and ceremony it could muster to make his inauguration. impressive.

Then came eight years during which everything had to be determined, from homeliest details of government to questions of gravest moment. "I walk as it were on untrodden ground," the new President wrote, wrote, and being humbleminded as well as earnest, he asked help and advice from many, even from men much younger than himself, with the winning apology: "I am troublesome. You must excuse me; ascribe it to friendship and confidence."

The problems of his administration foreshadowed almost every issue that has since arisen to trouble an executive pillow. There were relations to be reëstablished with the outside world; for though the States had boastfully cast off the yoke of Europe, they found themselves bound to it, now that war was over, by ties of memory no war could break, and dependent upon it, moreover, for tangible necessary supplies, like bricks to build into their houses, and dishes from which to eat their food.

There were boundaries to be adjusted to the north and to the south. On the west was the vexed question of navigation of the Mississippi River. There was con

stant, nagging anxiety about expenses of government; there was among the people an unrest that did not stop short of actual rebellion; there were humiliating scandals in the President's official family; and there was jealousy in all the various departments of government.

States were jealous of encroachments

upon their sovereign power; municipalities were fearful of losing one jot of local authority. The newly inaugurated Federal Government was tenacious of its dignity as representing all these collective units; but among themselves the three subdivisions of the Federal Government manoeuvered for place and power. The