A serious complication now faced the boy. It was in the middle of July; the company was not to start until August, and he could draw no salary until the engagement began. With the assistance of Gustave he rented a two-dollar-a-week room and existed on a meal-ticket good for twenty-two fifteen-cent meals that he had bought for three dollars. Charles sat at rehearsals with Haverly. He had a genius for stage effects and made many practical suggestions. The big brass-band, an all-important adjunct of the minstrel show, fascinated him. When the season opened with a flourish the receipts amazed him. For the first time he came in contact with real money. The gross income of the Dillon company had never exceeded a thousand dollars a week; now he was handling more than that sum every night. After a brief engagement at the Adelphi Theater in Chicago, which Haverly owned, the "Forty--Count 'Em--Forty" started on their long tour which rounded out the amusement apprenticeship of Charles Frohman. * * * Charles now made his first real appearance before the public, and in spectacular fashion. It was the custom of a minstrel company to parade each day. With their record-breaking organization the Mastodons gave this feature of minstrelsy perhaps its greatest traditions. Wearing shining silk hats, frock-coats, and lavender trousers, and headed by "the world's greatest minstrel band," the "Forty--Count 'Em--Forty" swayed the heart and moved the imagination of admiring multitudes wherever they went. Charles, who to the end of his days despised a silk hat, now wore one for the first time, but under protest. However, he manfully took his place in the front set of fours with the ranking officers of the organization, and marched many a weary mile. So great was his dislike for a silk hat even then that he invariably carried a cap in his pocket and the moment the parade was over the abhorred headpiece was removed. The first stop of the Mastodons was at Toledo, Ohio. A great crowd assembled around the theater, and the treasurer, a weak little man, seemed afraid to raise the window. "They'll run over me," he whined. "All right," said Charles. "I'll take the window and sell the tickets." Up to this time his only box-office experience had been as a mere lad at Hooley's Theater in Brooklyn, but he handled that big crowd with such skill and speed that even "Big Bill" Foote, who was the manager of the company, patted him on the back and said a kind word. Foote, who was Charles's superior officer on this trip, was a type of the big, loud, blustering theatrical man of the time. He was six feet tall, and he towered over his youthful assistant, who was his exact opposite in manner and speech. Yet between these two men of strange contrast there developed a close kinship. The little, plump, rosy-cheeked treasurer could handle the big, bluff, noisy manager at will. Such was Charles Frohman's experience with men always.