The little Gish family had never lived in a house, always in an apartment: in the Brentwood Apartments, and in the La Belle. But in the autumn of 1915, they leased Denishawn, home of the dancer, Ruth St. Denis, fitted for a school, plainly furnished, with dancing-floor, horizontal bar and other equipment, all of which strongly appealed to Lillian, who had been studying with Miss St. Denis, and could continue her work there. The owner had left the beginnings of a menagerie, which they completed. At Christmas time that year, most of Lillian’s friends gave her live things. A partial census shows an owl—one-eyed, gray—eight Japanese finches, two parakeets, love-birds, two or three canaries, one little poll-parrot; another, “John” (who, in 1932, still survives); also, squirrels, a pair of golden pheasants, and a pair of peacocks that Miss St. Denis had left. They did not remain in Denishawn; the next paragraph explains why. Lillian to Nell: We have moved from that huge house I told you about. We were there eight months, and during the last four, we had four burglars. One was so bold as to come in through the dining-room window, all the way upstairs into Mother’s room, at the improper hour of 2:30 in the morning. Being an old house with many squeaks, Mother knew all about him before he made his appearance, and greeted him with two bullets, the first of which hit the ceiling (she would have been terrified if she had hit _him_), and the second went through the railing in the hall. However, the man ran away, and the police never did catch him. All this time I was out on the sleeping-porch, petrified—could not utter a sound or move an inch. Oh, I am very brave. Imagine, Nell, being awakened from a sound sleep by your Mother tearing through the house, shooting a gun. So they went back to apartments, permanently, as they believed. Mrs. Gish was not very well, and wanted only to have peace. She was something of a financier; her business experience partly accounted for that, though she was a natural economist. “Your salaries,” she told Lillian and Dorothy, “are not income, but merely an exchange in money for your natural capital of youth and health. Salaries are capital, and all above actual needs should be invested as such. The returns you get from investment are income.” [Illustration: LILLIAN AS ELSIE STONEMAN, IN “THE BIRTH OF A NATION”]