Life and Lillian Gish (1932)

"Her First False Step" 39 ion of the road. They did not linger on the street, they did not show themselves more than necessary, especially in the larger towns. Lillian, many years later, wrote: Before I could understand what it was all about, I knew of subterfuges and evasions and tremendous plottings to keep myself and my sister acting, so that the very necessary money might be earned. . . . Their safety lay in their obscurity. Had they been with important companies, playing finer theatres, they would hardly have escaped. The season of 1903-4 remains to Lillian and Dorothy the most memorable — for a very good reason: they were together, and their mother was with them. For the time, at least, Mary Gish's dream had come true: she had secured parts for her little girls and herself in the same company. Her own part and Dorothy's were small, but would more than pay expenses. Dorothy was a news-girl, who sold "Evenin' pipers!" Lillian's part was a very good one; their combined salaries were forty-five dollars per week! The play was "Her First False Step," another fierce melodrama; only, in this one, Lillian, instead of being nearly blown up was within an ace of being devoured by savage African lions, being rescued by the brave hero, barely in the nick of time! There were two of the lions, and they were really savage, for later when they were sold to a circus, one of them tore out a keeper's arm. There was a provision, however, against accidents: The lions were in a cage in which there was a sliding division, so cunningly arranged that even those who sat in the front rows could not see it. At the instant when the noble hero leaps into the cage and