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SHOWMAN
smelled a rat and, instead of being impressed by the popular demand for me, he fired me that night. He also went on to play "Faust" for twenty years and make piles of money out of it.
My next venture into piracy is a long story that had better be worked into gradually. It began when Edwin Booth, at the peak of his fame, came to San Francisco to put on a magnificent repertory for the town where he got his start. Thousands of cheering citizens greeted him at the railroad station and lined the streets to see him drive past on the way to the hotel. Similarly, when they issued a call for bit actors to lead mobs and fight in battle scenes and roar as Roman citizens in Booth's plays, the theater was jammed with professionals panting for a chance to say they had acted with Booth. I was on hand early and landed a berth at $22 a week. All of us would have played for nothing and been glad of the privilege.
Then one night a rearrangement of the cast of "Hamlet" left the role of second grave-digger unfilled and I volunteered— I never lacked for nerve. Besides I'd played that part in every mining-camp from Seattle to Los Angeles. Booth wasn't very confident about me, I'm afraid, but he finally said well, do whatever I was accustomed to doing and he'd play along. He was the gentlest and most considerate star I ever saw— his corrections and suggestions were made with courtesy and point— none of these bullyragging, temperamental outbursts the smaller fry were so fond of. And, when the cur
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