The same to you. My first drink in three months!
"Yes, Lynn, I quit the stage at the end of last season. I quit it
because I was sick of the life. And especially because my heart and
soul were sick of men--of the kind of men we stage people have to be
up against. You know what the game is to us--it's a fight against 'em
all the way down the line from the manager who wants us to try his
new motor-car to the bill-posters who want to call us by our front
names.
"And the men we have to meet after the show are the worst of all. The
stage-door kind, and the manager's friends who take us to supper and
show their diamonds and talk about seeing 'Dan' and 'Dave' and
'Charlie' for us. They're beasts, and I hate 'em.
"I tell you, Lynn, it's the girls like us on the stage that ought to
be pitied. It's girls from good homes that are honestly ambitious and
work hard to rise in the profession, but never do get there. You hear
a lot of sympathy sloshed around on chorus girls and their fifteen
dollars a week. Piffle! There ain't a sorrow in the chorus that a
lobster cannot heal.
"If there's any tears to shed, let 'em fall for the actress that gets
a salary of from thirty to forty-five dollars a week for taking a
leading part in a bum show. She knows she'll never do any better; but
she hangs on for years, hoping for the 'chance' I that never comes.
"And the fool plays we have to work in! Having another girl roll you
around the stage by the hind legs in a 'Wheelbarrow Chorus' in a
musical comedy is dignified drama compared with the idiotic things
I've had to do in the thirty-centers.
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