_Dear Kate_:
Just as I was a getting ready to go up to the Winter Garden for our try
out, I got a letter from Mrs. Smith saying that Billy had the diptheria.
She said, "don't come," that she would let me know all the time how he
was. Fred come to take me up and I told him I was not going, that I was
going to Billy, and he almost went crazy. He said, "Why, Nan, don't you
see you will lose your chance if you don't show up now, they will never
give it to you again." I said, "I don't care, I am going to Billy." He
nearly cried. He said, "Nan, you have been working two years trying to
get on Broadway, and if they had told you six months ago that you had a
chance to go on at the Garden, you would a said they were liars or you
would a died for joy. And now you throw it all over for a kid." I said,
I didn't care, I was a going to Billy. He talked and he talked and then
he went down and phoned for Will Henderson who come over and talked to
me. They made me feel that I was doing them a rotten trick, cause Will
wrote the music and was going to have his name on the program, and he
said that if I didn't show up, he would lose the biggest chance he ever
had, to get back decent again. So I gave in if they would promise to get
me to the train as soon as our turn was over.
Well, we went and the dance sure did go. I came back eight times and I
never saw anybody so tickled in his life as Will to think that he can
have his name on a program again. He says he will go out to that dope
joint in White Plains to-morrow, cause he believes he still has got a
chance of making good. It does put heart into you when you are down and
out to feel that perhaps there is something still ahead of you if you
will only buck up.
After my turn the manager came into the dressing room and offered us
season's work. I think it was the happiest minit of my life. I have
worked for it ever since I was a kid and I just seemed to know that some
day I would be on top. Why, think of it, Kate, I am going to have my
name, Nancy Lane, on a program of the biggest dancing place in America,
and I will be dancing along side of girls from Europe and real
actresses. I felt all choked up and I was dead scared that fat manager
would see how tickled I was. I am going to do three dances, and talk
about wages--no, it is salary now--say, when I die I will leave a
Foundation fund for poor dancers who have caught rheumatism in their
lower limbs. I'll bet you to-morrow that everybody from 14th Street to
42nd Street will be trying to give me a touch. That is a sure sign you
are getting along well in the world, when your friends try to borrow
money off you, but Hetty Green will be a willful waster compared to me,
cause I am going to plant it all in the saving's bank for you and
Billy.
Good-bye, old lady, I am off for New Jersey. Even when I was a dancing
and the people was a giving me a hand, I was a wondering how Billy was,
and every once in a while his face would come before me and nearly shut
out the lights.
Your happy
_Nan_.