"What's born of a cat runs after mice." WHEN STARK'S CAFÉ WAS CLOSED "Impossible, impossible, impossible," said everybody when the news passed around that Stark's Café was closed and that the house was being demolished. Stark's Café on Houston Street was a celebrated landmark of New York. It was there that the playwrights, from the most pretentious to the humblest, closed contracts with managers. A special table at the upper end of the place was reserved for this purpose, and when a manager was sitting at that table with a playwright it meant business. "Charlie" the lawyer, would then loom up from somewhere and draw up the "funeral papers." Stark's Café! Why, Jewish actors in Alexandria, Egypt, made appointments with their London acquaintances to "meet at Stark's." It was not necessary to add "in New York." Stark's was the stage mart of the world. The first tables near the door, just ordinary wooden tables, were apportioned for the ushers, ticket speculators and supers. Next to these tables were a few better ones, marble topped, at which were seated the provincial actors on visit in the metropolis. After those, there were a few which belonged to musicians and the writers of vaudeville jingles. But the round centre tables and those near the windows toward Houston Street were reserved for stars of both sexes, managers and successful playwrights. Stark's head waiter put it very clearly: "These tables are reserved for gentlemen who at least occasionally put on a silk hat." And now, this place, this rendezvous of the two hemispheres was closed and being torn down. * * * * * Old Samuels, one of the oldest Jewish actors, complained bitterly about it. "You understand," he said, "it's now twenty years that I never missed a day from Stark's. In the morning, after breakfast, I'd shave, dress and go to Stark's. Maybe, who knows! and after lunch I'd return there. To save carfare we moved not far from the place. After supper I was again there, and after the show--maybe--maybe." Samuels's nickname was "Samuel Maybe," because it's now more than twenty years since he came from London, where he was a success, to play here, and it's still "Maybe." But he has never been faithless to his art. Oh, no! This was chiefly due to the fact that his wife and daughter were excellent dressmakers. "You see for yourself what a calamity the tearing down of Stark's place is," old Samuels continued, as he wiped a tear from his eye. "All my hopes are blasted. There can be no 'maybe' any longer--I am doomed. What will I do every morning, every afternoon, every evening? Where will they come to look for me when they will need me?"