He lost no time in starting. With a single grip-sack, which contained his modest wardrobe, the eager boy started on his first railroad journey of any length into the great West. It was the initial step of what, from this time on, was to be a continuous march of ever-widening importance. Begrimed but radiant, the boy stepped from a day-coach at two o'clock in the morning at Winona. No scene could have been more desolate. Save for the station-master and a solitary brakeman there was only one other person on hand, and that individual was the faithful Gustave, who advanced swiftly through the gloom and greeted his brother enthusiastically. Charles was all excitement. He had not slept a wink. It was perhaps the longest and most irksome journey he ever took. He was bubbling with the desire to get to work. The two brothers went to a hotel where Gustave had a room, and there they sat for four hours. It is a picture well worth keeping in mind: the pleased older boy, eager to get his brother started right; the younger lad all ears, and his eyes big with wonder and anticipation. There was no thought of food or rest. Gustave was enthusiastic about the company. He said to his brother: "Why, Charley, we've got real New York actors, and our leading lady, Louise Dillon, has a genuine sealskin coat. That coat will get us out of any town. You've got no 'Ghost Show' amateurs to handle now, but real actors and actresses." Then came an announcement that startled the boy, for Gustave continued: "Your salary is to be twenty-five dollars a week and hotel bills, but you must not spend more than one dollar and a half a day for meals and room." In this dingy room of an obscure hotel in a country town Charles Frohman got his first instructions in practical theatrical work. Perhaps the most important of this related to bill-posting. In those days it was a tradition in theatrical advertising that whoever did the most effective bill-posting in a town got the audience. Most of the publicity was done with posters. An advance-agent had to be a practical bill-poster himself. To get the most conspicuous sites for bills and to keep those bills up until the attraction played became the chief task of the advance-agent. The provincial bill-posters were fickle and easily swayed. The agent with the most persuasive personality, sometimes with the greatest drinking capacity, won the day. All this advice, and much more, was poured by Gustave into the willing ears of the youthful Charles. No injunction laid on that keen-eyed boy in the gray dawn of that historic morning back in the 'seventies was more significant than these words from his elder brother: "Your success in handling the bill-poster does not lie through a barroom door. Give him all the passes he wants, but never buy him a drink."