"I'm going to save you from starving to death," he began, and then as the sense of my courage in the face of such an alternative grew upon him, "I'm going to make you one of the leading tragic actresses of America." "And what am I to do?" "Whatever I tell you. Eversley thinks you could study a while with Mrs. Delamater. She is wonderful, wonderful!" He described with his arms a circle scarcely larger than the arc of his cherubic contour, to show how wonderful she was. "I should like some dancing lessons, too," I submitted. "Do you dance? Ah, no, it is too much to expect; but if I could find me a dancer, Miss Lattimore, a born dancer!" He brought his arms into play again to describe a felicity which transcended expression. "But they are not so easy to find," he sighed audibly. "We must do what we can already." Eversley told me afterward that Polatkin had the soul of an actor, but the only part which he had ever been able to play without being ridiculous, was Fagin, and now he was too fat even for that, so that he took it out vicariously in the success of those whose opportunity he made. It was the dream of his life to find a real genius, a dancer or a prima donna; I believe I was the nearest he ever came to it; and I owe it to him to say that I couldn't have arrived at more than the faintest approach to it without him. It was that contract I signed with him there in Eversley's room which brought him in the end about three hundred per cent. on the money he advanced me, but I never begrudged it. He gave me a check then and there, and an address of a hotel in New York where I was to meet him within five days. He looked me well over as he shook hands with me. "You would be better if you would weigh about ten pounds more," he assured me, and I was mixed between resentment at his personality and thankfulness to have even that sort of interest taken in me. I had lunch with Mr. and Mrs. Eversley afterward; there was not time for half the things I wished to hear from him, but this sticks in my memory. I had put it to him that the meagreness of my personal experiences had, so far, tended to the skimping of my art. "There's no question as to that," he told me, "but it is nothing compared to the effect that your art will have on your experience. It's a mistake to let it set up in you an appetite for particular kinds of it. There's the experience of having done without experience, you can put that into your acting as well as the other, and you'll find it is often the most valuable." I was later to find the worth of that, but like most advice, it only proved itself in the event of my not taking it.