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[Illustration: "_Plays are put up in packages and sold at the delicatessen shops_"]
WITH 50 FULL PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS BY WARREN ROCKWELL
RICHARD G. BADGER THE GORHAM PRESS BOSTON
The articles that make up this volume originally appeared, at various times, in Collier's Weekly, The Saturday Evening Post, The Associated Sunday Magazines, The Smart Set, Munsey's Magazine, Ainslee's Magazine, Smith's Magazine, and The Green Book Album. The author desires to thank the editors of these periodicals for permission to republish.
TO THE LADY WHO GOES TO THE THEATER WITH ME
_Wherein, at union rates, the author performs the common but popular musical feat known as "blowing one's own horn"_
_Being a correspondence school education in the business of the playhouse that should enable the veriest tyro to become a Charles Frohman or a David Belasco_
_Being reminiscences of the author's nefarious but more or less innocuous career as a press agent_
_Being a discussion as to which pursuit is the more painful, with various entertaining and instructive remarks as to the method of following both_
_Being an effort to outdo Ernest Thompson Seton and Charles G. D. Roberts at their own game--which is speaking literally_
_Being a diagnosis of the disease, and a description of its symptoms, which has the rare medical merit of attempting a cure at the same time_
_Being an account of intrepid explorations in the habitat of the creatures whose habits are set forth in the preceding chapters_
_Being something about the process by which performances are got ready for the pleasure of the public and the profit of the ticket speculators_
_Being the sort of title to suggest a treatise on suicide, whereas, in point of fact, this chapter merely confides all that the author doesn't know about acting_
_Wherein is shown that the opening of a new play is more hazardous than the opening of a jack-pot, and that theatrical production is a game of chance in comparison with which roulette and rouge-et-noir are as tiddledewinks or old maid_