"_Now_ you can give me the rest of the bottle."
"We'll drink it together ... to your success, Gregory!"
"Yes--you devil!" I replied, fond of him, "you'd have had me reeling
drunk, that last act, if I had listened to you."
And I gave him an affectionate clout in the ribs.
* * * * *
Again the professors were urging me to become more "regular" and
pointing out the great career that awaited me--if I only would work.
There was some subsequent talk of sending the play to Osageville,
Topeka, Kansas City....
But the faculty opposed it ... it would not be proper to send girls and
boys out together, travelling about like a regular theatrical company.
* * * * *
As it had been said that I was going to take up the career of animal
trainer,--after my going into the cage with the lions--so it was now
pronounced, and reported in the papers--Travers saw to that--that I
meditated a career as a professional actor....
* * * * *
Gleeful, and vastly relieved, Professor Dineen slipped me twenty-five
dollars out of his own pocket.
Several fraternities showed indications of "rushing" me, after my star
performance ... but my associations with the odd characters about town
and the wild, ignorant farmers of the lower type that drove in each
Saturday from the adjacent country, made them, at first, hesitate ...
then utterly drop the idea....
* * * * *
Broke, I now wrote a long letter to Jarvis Alexander Mackworth.
I boldly complained of my poverty, inasmuch as it deterred me from my
work.
"I have now proven my case," I wrote him,--"my poems have appeared in
the _Century_, in _Everybody's_, in _Munsey's_....
"I have acted, as well, as a professional in a first-rate play, by a
great European dramatist ... giving Kansas the distinction of being the
first to produce _Iistral_ on the American stage....
"_Now_ I want to finish my four-act play on Judas. To do so I must have
enough to eat and a place to sleep, without being made to worry about
it, for a year....
"Can't you help me to a millionaire?"
Mackworth answered me generously, affectionately.
In two weeks he had procured my millionaire ... Derek, of Chicago, the
bathtub magnate ... how much could I get on with?