"Well," he continued, "it ought to be called after that conjurer chap, Bengali, or whatever his name is. However, go ahead. Get Lackaye back from 'The District Attorney' company to which Palmer has lent him. Engage young Ditrichstein by all means for one of your Bohemians. Call in Virginia Harned and the rest of the stock company. And there you are." With uncanny precision he had cast the leading roles perfectly and on the impulse of the moment. During the fortnight of the incubation of the play Potter saw Frohman nightly, for they were now fast friends. Frohman was curiously fascinated by "Bengali," as he insisted upon calling Svengali. "We do it next Monday in Boston," said Potter, "and I count on your coming to see it." Frohman went to Boston to see the second performance. After the play he and Potter walked silently across the Common to the Thorndyke Hotel. In his room Frohman broke into speech: "They are roasting it awfully in New York," he began. "Yet Joe Jefferson says it will go around the world." Then he added, "They say you have cut out all the Bohemian stuff." "Nevertheless," replied Potter, "W. A. Brady has gone to New York to-night to offer Mr. Palmer ten thousand dollars on account for the road rights." "Well," said Frohman, showing his hand at last, "Jefferson and Brady are right, and if Palmer will let me in I'll go half and half, or, if he prefers, I'll take it all." At supper after the first performance at the Garden Theater in New York, Frohman advised Sir Herbert Tree to capture the play for London. Henceforth, wherever he traveled, "Trilby" seemed to pursue him. "I've seen your old 'Bengali,'" he wrote Potter, "in Rome, Vienna, Berlin, everywhere. It haunts me. And, as you cut out the good Bohemian stuff, I'll use it myself at the Empire." He did so in Clyde Fitch's version of "La Vie de Boheme," which was called "Bohemia." "How did it go?" Potter wrote him from Switzerland. "Pretty well," replied Frohman. "Unfortunately we left out 'Bengali.'" On more than one occasion Frohman produced a play for the mere pleasure of doing it. He put on a certain little dramatic fantasy. It was foredoomed to failure and held the boards only a week. "Why did you do this play?" asked William H. Crane. "Because I wanted to see it played," answered Frohman. "I knew it would not be successful, but I simply had to do it. I saw every performance and I liked it better every time I saw it." Often Frohman would make a contract with a playwright for a play, and long before the first night he would realize that it had no chance. Yet he kept his word with the author, and it was always produced. The case of "The Heart of a Thief," by the late Paul Armstrong, is typical. Frohman paid him an advance of fifteen hundred dollars. After a week of rehearsals every one connected with the play except Armstrong realized that it was impossible.