“What do they want you for?” I asked exceedingly amused. “A guest,” he answered with a grin. “Mrs. X---- asked me for dinner to-night. I promised I’d be there and then found out she had asked a whole lot of people. So you won’t catch me going.” This was my introduction to Charlie’s most notorious social failing. Often thereafter I witnessed his struggles against being taken into custody. Less frequently I was one of a group of indignant people waiting for a Chaplin who had promised to come and never did show up at all. Not long ago a friend of mine asked him why he so hated to make or keep an engagement. “I don’t know,” answered Charlie. “I suppose, though, it’s because I hate to feel that I have to do anything at a certain time. It just destroys my pleasure in doing it.” At this my friend suggested, “Ah, Mr. Chaplin, but don’t you think that is because ’way down deep you don’t feel quite free? The person who is conscious of real freedom doesn’t fret at any such superficial bondage.” He looked at her eagerly, delightedly--just as he always does when confronted by a new theory. “Why, I never thought of that, but I believe it’s true,” he assented. “You see,” he added, “when I was a young boy I never was free. I was always the one who had to stay at home. My brother Sydney didn’t hang around as I did. He went off to Australia.” Then for the first time I suspected what was responsible for Charlie’s love of power. Those early years of his in London when, the son of poor vaudeville artists, he experienced hunger and tragedy and the constant terror of the next day, have driven far into his brain. No prosperity can quite rid him of fear. That is why he wants to assure himself in every way of his present strength. For what is it but fear which makes a man conscious always of the thickness of his armour, the sharpness of his weapons? There was one engagement of his which Charlie did keep. When Claire Sheridan, the English sculptress, came to California she expressed immediately a desire to meet Chaplin. My friend Abram Lehr thereupon invited the comedian to a dinner given for the handsome author of “From Mayfair to Moscow.” “And don’t you dare fail me this time!” admonished Mr. Lehr as he proffered the invitation. Charlie not only obeyed; he obeyed in a dinner-coat. From the first, so Lehr reports, the two seemed entirely satisfied with each other, and that occasion led to the friendship upon which Mrs. Sheridan dwells so glowingly in her “American Diary.” Charlie is well liked by the average woman. Indeed, most people are attracted to him. Why should they not be? His drollery, his quick and vivid response to the moment, his friendly, boyish smile, the manner which makes you feel at first meeting as if you had known him all your life--these would lead the usual person to pick him out in a roomful of distinguished people. And all this quite apart from the glamour of his reputation.