At first the fact that Rice was one of the greatest dancers living and that he had six songs to sing rather dampened my confidence, not only because I didn’t know either the songs or the dance steps, but because I never sang a song or danced a step in my life. Little obstacles, however, never troubled me in those days, and although I was three inches shorter and fifty pounds heavier than Rice I calmly arrayed myself in his opening costume and rang the curtain up. About all I remember of that night is that we got the money, although for years afterwards whenever I chanced to meet that local manager he fell into a violent fit of laughter, the cause of which he was never satisfactorily able to explain. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ──────────────── CHAPTER II ◆ SELLING THE FIRST ONE ──────────────── Although I am rambling about a little ahead of my story the reader will have observed that by this time I had crossed the Rubicon and had sold my first play and was steaming ahead at full speed. Very few weeks pass during which I am not asked “how to sell a first play” and for the benefit of all would-be dramatists I propose to pause here and answer this question for all time by giving a brief description of how I sold mine. I had no money at all and absolutely no idea of who the managers were or how to approach them, but I had a play, or at least I had an amazing number of perfectly good words neatly set down on paper, and I started boldly out on my quest. This quest proved as it almost always does an unbelievably long and difficult one. Luck favored me by bringing about a chance meeting on Broadway with an old friend, the captain of the Harvard varsity football team on which I had been a substitute, and through him I managed to land the job of coaching the football squad of a New York prep school at a salary of fifty dollars a month. So the food and shelter problem was solved for the next few months. But all good things, even football seasons, come to an end, and before I had discovered, first, that no one would read my play, and, second, that it was absolutely not worth reading anyway, I had some hard knocks and some rather dire experiences. At length I made up my mind that possibly the reason I couldn’t sell my play was because it was a bad one and I started another, but stern necessity was knocking hard and loud and in a moment of discouragement I made up my mind to again become an actor. A kind Providence, however, saved me from this fate, although at the moment I was tempted to doubt its kindness.