Tramping on Life Part 95

But, though the scenery went down, the audience did not laugh, but sat spellbound.

I was finally dragged away ... on the way to the asylum, half my costume torn from my body ... and I kept crying aloud ... for mercy ... for deliverance ... after the curtain had long gone down....

"Big Bill" Heizer gave me a thump in the ribs.

"For G.o.d's sake, Mr. Gregory" (he had called me "Johnnie" always, before) "it's only play-acting ... it's not real ... quit it ... it gets me."

The audience went wild with applause. I had won Laurel's complete approbation--for the day, as I had won Mt. Hebron's, that fall Field Day, long before!

Travers had slipped me just one shot of whiskey before the last act went on. He had tried to persuade me to drink more. He was in my dressing room....

I could hardly stand, from the weakness of excitement and exertion.

After the play was over--

"_Now_ you can give me the rest of the bottle."

"We'll drink it together ... to your success, Gregory!"

"Yes--you devil!" I replied, fond of him, "you'd have had me reeling drunk, that last act, if I had listened to you."

And I gave him an affectionate clout in the ribs.

Again the professors were urging me to become more "regular" and pointing out the great career that awaited me--if I only would work.

There was some subsequent talk of sending the play to Osageville, Topeka, Kansas City....

But the faculty opposed it ... it would not be proper to send girls and boys out together, travelling about like a regular theatrical company.

As it had been said that I was going to take up the career of animal trainer,--after my going into the cage with the lions--so it was now p.r.o.nounced, and reported in the papers--Travers saw to that--that I meditated a career as a professional actor....

Gleeful, and vastly relieved, Professor Dineen slipped me twenty-five dollars out of his own pocket.

Several fraternities showed indications of "rus.h.i.+ng" me, after my star performance ... but my a.s.sociations with the odd characters about town and the wild, ignorant farmers of the lower type that drove in each Sat.u.r.day from the adjacent country, made them, at first, hesitate ...

then utterly drop the idea....

Broke, I now wrote a long letter to Jarvis Alexander Mackworth.

I boldly complained of my poverty, inasmuch as it deterred me from my work.

"I have now proven my case," I wrote him,--"my poems have appeared in the _Century_, in _Everybody's_, in _Munsey's_....

"I have acted, as well, as a professional in a first-rate play, by a great European dramatist ... giving Kansas the distinction of being the first to produce _Iistral_ on the American stage....

"_Now_ I want to finish my four-act play on Judas. To do so I must have enough to eat and a place to sleep, without being made to worry about it, for a year....

"Can't you help me to a millionaire?"

Mackworth answered me generously, affectionately.

In two weeks he had procured my millionaire ... Derek, of Chicago, the bathtub magnate ... how much could I get on with?

I wrote that I could do with seven dollars a week....

Mackworth replied not to be a fool--that Derek was willing to make it fifteen, for a year's duration....

I replied that I could only take enough to fill my simplest wants....

Derek jocosely added fifty cents to the sum I asked--"for postage stamps"-- ... for one year, week in, week out, without a letter from me except those indicating changes of address, without sending me a word of advice, criticism, or condemnation, no matter what I got into ... Derek sent me that weekly stipend of seven dollars and fifty cents!...

I settled down to consecutive literary work.

Lyrics I could write under any condition. They came to me so deeply from the subconscious that at times they almost seemed like spirit-control, which, at times, I am sure they had been, till I set the force of my will against them. For I was resolved that what _I_ wrote should be an emanation from my own personality, not from dead and gone poets who used me for a medium.

But when it came to long and consecutive effort, the continual petty worry of actual penury sapped my mind so that I lacked the power of application....

With Derek's remittances this obstacle was removed....

I had soon completed the first act of my apostolic play....

And then I plunged into a sc.r.a.pe, together with my fellow members of the press or "Scoop Club," as it was more popularly known, which halted my work mid-way....

Our common adventure derived its inception from a casual remark of Jack Travers', at one of our meetings....

Ever since Arthur Brisbane had come to Laurel, Jack had been on his toes....

"Brisbane brought me a breath of what it must mean to be a big newspaper man in the world outside," said Travers, as he stretched and yawned, "why don't we," he continued, "_start_ something to show 'em we're alive, and not dead like so many of the intellects on the Hill!"

"--s all right to talk about starting something ... that's easy to do.

The h.e.l.l of it is, to stop it, after you've got it started,"