The prevailing notion is that I come from a theatrical family and that I was educated for the stage. Nothing is further from the truth. My father was a lawyer with a knowledge of the drama such as few professionals have had. From the time I was able to eat I was fed on Shakespeare. When I was twelve years old I could recite the principal speeches in most of that gentleman’s plays. My article in _Photoplay_ some months ago gave the whole story in fewest words and the same is herewith appended. My dramatic education was augmented by frequent contact with great actors. My father was a friend of Mansfield, Edwin Booth, Stuart Robson, John Drew, Frederick Warde and other famous actors who were his guests whenever they visited Denver. I once asked Mr. Mansfield about the best way to prepare for the stage and he told me that there was no such thing as preparation for the stage; but that there were certain accomplishments that were essential to _great success_. These included a knowledge of fencing, painting and the French language. Modesty precludes a discussion of the result of following that advice. Suffice to say, I can defend myself fairly well with rapier or broadsword, I can tell a Corot from a Raphael without the aid of artificial devices, and I have made my way through France without being arrested or going hungry. Writers who give advice to the ambitious usually cite experiences from their own book of life, but if any young man were to follow in my footsteps, he’d take a rather devious path to the stage and he’d have to travel _some_. My parents were far from convinced that I was cut out for the stage, so I was sent to the Colorado School of Mines to become a mining engineer. But there didn’t seem to be any room in my head for calculus, trigonometry and such things. I could never master higher mathematics; therefore I could never be a mining engineer, so I quit. Now I’m not desirous of inflicting a recital of my deficiencies on a magnanimous public; just trying to show that one may fail in many things before finding one’s niche in life. Certainly I failed in many ventures, even in my first attack on the American stage. The first onslaught didn’t even make a dent on that historic institution. Important results have often hinged on trivial things. Tiny causes have had _titanic effects_. If a certain actor hadn’t been sent to jail in Minnesota a dozen and a half years ago, I wouldn’t now be writing this. If you are familiar with baseball--and the chances are nine in ten that you are--you know the meaning of the expression, “the breaks of the game.” Given two baseball teams of equal strength, victory will invariably perch on the banner of the side which “gets the breaks.”