with a negro. Callender needed some one to succeed him. A man whom Gustave Frohman had once befriended, knowing of his intense desire to enter the profession, recommended him for the position, and he got it.

All was excitement in the Frohman family. At last the fortunes of one member were definitely committed to the theater, and although it was a negro minstrel show, it meant a definite connection with public entertainment.

No one, not even Gustave himself, felt the enthusiasm so keenly as did little Charles, then twelve years old. He buzzed about the fortunate brother.

"Do you think you can get me a job as programmer with your show?" he asked.

"No," answered the new advance-agent. "Don't start in the business until you can be an agent or manager."

On August 2, 1872, Gustave Frohman started to Buffalo to go ahead of the Callender Minstrels. Charles followed his brother's career with eager interest, and he longed for the time when he would have some connection with the business that held such thrall for him.

Life now lagged more than ever for Charles. He chafed at the service in the store; he detested school; his one great desire was to earn money and share in the support of the family. His father urged him to prepare for the law.

"No," he said, "I won't be a lawyer. I want to deal with lots of people."

Charles frequently referred to Tony Pastor. "He's a big man," he would often say. "I would like to do what he is doing."

A seething but unformed aspiration seemed to stir his youthful breast. Once he heard his eldest brother recite some stanzas of Alexander Pope, in which the following line occurs:

The whole, the boundless continent is ours.

This line impressed the lad immensely. It became his favorite motto; he wrote it in his sister's autograph-album; he spouted it on every occasion; it is still to be found in his first scrap-book framed in round, boyish hand.

Now the singular thing about this sentiment is that he never quoted it correctly. It was a life-long failing. His version—and it was strangely prophetic of his coming career—was:

The whole—the boundless earth—is mine.

Meanwhile, Daniel Frohman had gone from The Tribune to work in the office of The New York Graphic, down in Park Place near Church Street. The Graphic was the aristocrat of newspapers—the first illustrated daily ever published anywhere. With the usual family team-work, Daniel got Charles a position with him in 1874. He was put in the circulation department at a salary of ten dollars a week, his first regular wage. It was a position with which personality had much to do, for one of the boy's chief tasks was to select a high type of newsboy equipped to sell a five-cent daily. His genial manner won the boys to him and they became his loyal co-workers.

With amazing facility he mastered his task. Among other things, he had to count newspapers. It was before the day of the machine enumerator, and the work had to be done by hand. Charles developed such extraordinary swiftness that patrons in the office often stopped to watch him. In throwing papers over the counter it was necessary to be accurate and positive, and here came the first manifestation of his dogged determination. He never lost his cunning in counting papers, and sometimes, when he was rich and famous, he would take a bundle of newspapers, to help a newsboy in the street, and run through them with all his old skill and speed.

Though his fingers were in the newspapers, his heart yearned for the theater. This ambition was heightened by the fact that his brother Daniel, having heeded the lure of Gustave, joined the Callender Minstrels as advance-agent, while Gustave remained back with the show. Slowly but surely the theater was annexing the Frohman boys. In the summer of 1874 Charles was drawn into its charmed circle, and in a picturesque fashion.

It was the custom for minstrel companies and other theatrical combinations to rent theaters outright during the dull summer months. The playhouses were glad to get the rental, and the organizations could remain intact during what would otherwise be a period of disorganization and loss. Gustave, therefore, took Hooley's Theater in Brooklyn for summer minstrel headquarters, and on a memorable morning in July Charles was electrified to receive the following letter from him: