"Uh huh," grunted the treasurer and took a deep inhale of his cigarette. We opened to less than $600. The performance made such a tremendous hit that we were sold out the last three performances of the week and the following week saw never an empty seat at any performance--and for all that we made no money! From Boston we went to Brooklyn where our opening house was $400. (Florence Nightingale was working her influence!) We played to gradually increasing business--but not enough to cover expenses--during the rest of the week. The next (and last) stand was Newark where we opened to $200! Again business increased with every performance but again we had a losing week. Then it was I insisted on closing. Florence Nightingale was an advance agent no attraction could hope to win out against. Thus Newark saw the last of "A Midsummer Night's Dream." And this is the record of a play which drew in two performances in one day more than $5,000! The day was the last Saturday of our three-weeks' run at the New Amsterdam! Following this fiasco I entered into a contract with Charles Frohman under which we produced "Beauty and the Barge," by Jacobs, the English playwright. It should have run a year. It failed dismally. I knew it would after witnessing the dress rehearsal. David Warfield, Frohman and I sat out front at that rehearsal, my part being read so I could get an idea of the ensembles. I discovered my two ingenues might have been taken from the Forest Home! My two light comedians were so light I am sure they could have walked on water! An old man character insisted on hitting the hard stage with his cane--supposed to be a garden! I begged Frohman to postpone the opening. These five people had a twenty-two-minute scene before I came on. Warfield agreed with me. A friend of Frohman's had come in meantime. He insisted that my "marvelous" acting would carry the play. "Marvelous acting be damned!" I cried. "No human being could succeed with such incompetent surroundings." I was voted down, however, and the next night we opened at the Lyceum Theatre. The play was dead before I made my entrance, a score of men leaving the house in the first fifteen minutes. My dressing-room was within five feet of the stage and I could hear every sound, from front and back. It wrung my heart as I heard the delicate, pretty little scenes I had worshipped when I had seen Cyril Maude's company play it in London just torn all to pieces! Point after point went for nothing. All the humor disappeared. It was awful! [Illustration: IN WHEN WE WERE TWENTY-ONE _The biggest bit of any play I ever produced_] Finally came my cue and I went on. My reception was vociferous and brought me out of my slough of despair. I even got a scene call after I made my exit. But the play was doomed. Afterwards I commiserated with Mr. Jacobs in London and told him it was only the acting that was to blame for its failure to run two years. It ran two weeks.