boxes into which you see them slipped when you give them to the official at the door. That result should be precisely the figure on the report. If it is greater the young man pays for the difference; if it is less nothing is said, since some people who bought tickets may have remained away. The statement of what has been disposed of, at what price, and with what total, is then signed jointly by the representative of the house and the representative of the company. Each keeps a copy of this statement and an additional copy is sent to the agent of the author. The transaction seems simple, but, if you will think the matter over, you will see that it is a nearly perfect method of preventing dishonesty.

The contract made between manager and author ordinarily provides that a play must be performed before a given date and so many times a year thereafter, in default of which all rights revert to the dramatist. One of the first requisites of a production now-a-days is scenery. Consequently, supposing still that you are the manager, you turn over your manuscript, act by act, to a scene painter, or to a number of scene painters, expressing your ideas on the subject, if you have any. The scene painter reads the play, formulates some ideas of his own, familiarizes himself with the time and place treated, and makes a model of each setting. The model is a miniature, usually on the scale of an inch to a foot, and it incorporates the necessaries described by the author with the luxuries imagined by the manager. Moreover, it is as accurate and beautiful as skill can make it. If the producer approves of the model a bargain is struck, a builder constructs the frame work which is to hold the scenery, the painter covers the canvas, and, for a while, at least, the matter of settings is off your mind. The setting of an act may cost $500 and it may cost $5,000. Generally, it comes to about $1,000.

In a play of modern life the actors are supposed to furnish their own costumes. Sometimes, when the dresses are to be exceptionally elaborate, this rule is varied. Should your property be a romantic drama or a comic opera, however, you have a conference with a costumer. The great producers, like the Shuberts and Klaw and Erlanger, maintain their own establishments, but this hardly will apply in your case. Now you will see costume plates instead of scene models—little paintings on card-board that frequently are exhibited in front of the theater in which the piece is running. These once passed upon, the contract for making the clothes will be let. Naturally, the cost is governed by the number of persons to be clad and by the nature of their garb. The gowns worn by one woman in the production of a Clyde Fitch society comedy came to $3,100. The costumes for a comic opera may foot up $20,000, irrespective of tights, stockings, slippers and gloves, which principals and chorus girls are obliged to find.

Engaging a company is a simple matter in comparison to what it used to be. A few years ago you would have been compelled to choose from thousands of applicants and to make personal visits to an actors' agency—say, Mrs. Packard's or Mrs. Fernandez'. Now metropolitan casts are composed chiefly of well known people. You have seen these people often, you know what they can do, you select them with an eye to round pegs and square holes, and you write to them or their representatives. In a week your cast is ready. Salaries range from $400 a week, paid to a popular leading man or woman, to $20 a week, the stipend of a player of bits. Chorus girls usually get $18, though especially handsome "show girls" are worth as much as $60. Your star probably insists on having from $300 to $500, and a percentage of the profits.

A stage manager is the man who does the thinking for actors. He directs rehearsals, devises "business" and effects, and often has a great deal more to do with the play than the author himself. Any author will tell you that this was true in the case of a failure; any stage manager will tell you it was true in the case of a success. In all seriousness, a stage manager is a mighty important individual. If actors roamed about at will in a play, as most laymen suppose they do, you couldn't tell a first night performance from a foot-ball game. Every actor in a piece knows just where he must stand when a certain line is spoken, and when, how, where and in what manner he must move to get in position for the next line. Smooth premieres are not accidents; they are designs. Sometimes, as in the case of David Belasco, producers are their own stage managers. Frequently, as with Charles Klein, authors stage their own plays. Almost always they have something to do with it.

"If actors roamed about at will you couldn't tell a first night performance from a football game"

The chorus of a musical comedy or a comic opera rehearses apart from the principals, and begins earlier. Putting on a piece like this is more difficult than putting on a legitimate comedy or a drama, and such a director as Julian Mitchell or R. H. Burnside may be paid $15,000 a year. The production of a "straight play" often is piece work, bringing about $500 for each piece. Costumes, scenery and properties are unknown until the last rehearsal. Two chairs represent a door or a sofa or a balcony in the minds of everyone concerned. "What is the woman doing on the bench?" I inquired once at a stock company rehearsal of "Mr. Barnes of New York."

"That isn't a bench," the manager replied. "That's a train of cars just leaving the railroad station at Milan."

While these things are going on in borrowed theaters or rented halls, two departments in your enterprise are preparing other details of the business. First, there is your booking agent. His task, like the matter of engaging a company, has been simplified. Formerly, he wrote to the manager of the theater you wanted in every city you wanted to play, and kept on writing until he had contracted for a route that would not involve your jaunting from Philadelphia to Chicago and then back to Baltimore on your way to St. Louis. Railway fares, even at two cents each per mile and one baggage car with every twenty-five tickets, eat up profits. Now-a-days your booking agent goes to the booking agent of one of the two big syndicates, each of which represents half of the theatres in the country, and that gentleman arranges a route while you wait. Sometimes it may not be a route worth waiting for, but that is determined by your importance and the estimated drawing power of your attraction. Theaters are "played on shares", the shares depending again upon the drawing power of your attraction and upon the size of the city booked. In Chicago you will get 50 per cent. of the receipts; in Newark 60 per cent; in Springfield or New Haven 70 per cent. A New York house keeps 50 per cent. and, unless your production seems promising, you will be obliged to guarantee that the theater's share will not fall below a certain figure.

Next, there is your press agent. He used to be a newspaper man, and he is worth $100 a week or not more than a dollar and a quarter. In his office is a stenographer, a mimeographing machine, and a list of six hundred daily newspapers. If he is worth $100 he knows just what each of those newspapers will print and what it will not. It is his business to cover a pound of advertising so completely with an ounce of news that the whole parcel will not be consigned to the waste-basket. Out in Milwaukee and over in