Perhaps the show has made a "hit." Perhaps not. One can never tell in advance, for it is gambling, pure and simple, so the oldest managers openly assert. If it proves a failure all the capital, labor and trouble has been thrown away like a flash in the pan. The actors arrive some night to find the house dark, the box-office receipts, scenery and properties seized on an attachment, and their salaries and prospects gone. What happens then with weeks, possibly months, of idleness ahead of them, can be better imagined than described. Somehow, the people struggle through and survive and bob up to face the same experience again. It is hard enough on the principals with good salaries and friends purchased through profligate expenditure of their money when all was sunshine and prosperity, but it is a worse blow to the chorus. Yet they pass through seemingly unscathed. They are used to it and know how. But this is a dreary side of the picture, and all productions are by no means doomed to flunk; those that do not go forth upon the road with a flourish of trumpets, the glitter and glamor of carloads of courts and palaces of canvas, tinsel and papier-mache and with everyone looking forward to the rapid acquirement of a fortune. Verily, your actor is a born optimist. Were it not for ambition, hope, egotism and inherent love of publicity, notoriety and admiration, where would the stage get its recruits? THE SHOW ON THE ROAD. After the production has taken to the road it may still prove a "frost"--the theatrical term for failure. Then it is the same grim story, with additional discouragements. There are cold, clammy hotelkeepers whose one anxiety is to see their bills paid, and commercially inclined railroads who will transport none, not even actors, without payment in something more tangible than promises. Then comes the benefit performance, the appeal to local lodges of orders the actors may be identified with and the mad scramble to induce the railroad to carry the people home "on their trunks." If they can get their baggage out of the hotels the performers usually find it possible to secure transportation by leaving their trunks with the railroads as a pawn to be released when they raise money enough to settle the bill. Surely a pleasant prospect--to go "home" penniless and without personal effects, clothing or even prospects. And all this time where is the manager? He may have fled in desperation with the few dollars that came into his hands the preceding night, or he may be shut up in his room worse off than his employes. It all depends upon circumstances.