The easy familiarity between the sexes which I had thought sufficiently deplorable in the "legitimate" branch of the theatrical profession was in the comic opera world flagrantly increased. I have heard a distinction made between immorality and unmorality, but I fail to observe any slight deviation from the general result. Vulgar stories, steeped in smut, went the rounds. Each new one was welcomed and passed down the line. If one betrayed her disapproval by ignoring the _raconteur_, she was laughed down and thereafter referred to as "very up-stage." In the dressing-rooms modesty of person was an unknown quantity. Not infrequently I found "extra" gentlemen performing lady's maid service for one of the girls. On one occasion when I slipped on the iron stairway leading to the stage, badly wrenching my ankle, a sturdy stage-hand picked me up, carried me to my dressing-room, and, before I realized what he was about, had pulled off my shoe and was in way of removing my stocking when I protested. "O, well, if you're that fussy--" he said as he went out.... One of the most pernicious influences to be contended against by the girl who tries to go straight is the never-ceasing topic of "men" and "money." The man behind the bankroll is the basis, in one form or another, of all the chorus-girl conversations. To be picked out by a man of means to marry, or, failing this, to be set up in a "swell" apartment and "put it all over" the girls of her acquaintance, is the hope which springs eternal in the chorus-girl breast. Even in hard times, when the champagne appetite needs must be quenched with beer, she dreams of diamonds. Standing in the wings, waiting for the cue, one hears an exchange of banter such as this: "Heard you was at the Abbaye last night.... Where'd you pick him up?... Say, don't you believe anything he tells you! Henny knows all about him and he says that for a tight-wad he's got Russell Sage skinned to death!" Or ... "I was at Morrisheimer's to-day; they're havin' a sale of models. I gotta three-piece velvet suit for thirty-five dollars, marked down from seventy." ... "Say! He must be good to you. Why don't you introduce me to some of your gentlemen friends?" I once asked a chorus girl of considerable notoriety how she had come to enter the profession. "O," she replied, "my folks was the poor but respectable kind. There was a big family of us, and I, bein' the oldest, had to help out. I didn't get much schoolin' and, after tryin' half a dozen things like bein' a chamber maid, waitin' in a restaurant and that kind of business, I tumbled to the fact that I wusn't bad lookin'. That's all I had; my face and my shape, and the stage was the best place to show 'em." My dressing-room mates were typical show-girls; manièré, self-conscious and always on parade. It was painfully evident they felt themselves above the chorus, though some of them were pleased to forget the fact that they were but recently graduated from that class.