[Illustration: IN HOBBIES WITH ELIZA WEATHERSBY _The play I won at faro_] Out of the proceeds of our first week I paid a retainer to Benjamin Wolfe, a Boston journalist who had written "The Mighty Dollar" for W. J. Florence, to write us a play on the lines of the one we were then doing. Had I known what was in store for us I would not have indulged in such extravagance. For the next five months we never saw a house of more than two hundred dollars at any performance and in a little while the remainder of our $2,000 had almost vanished. I had paid Wolfe a thousand dollars down as a retainer on his agreeing to deliver the manuscript in five months. We had been travelling through New York, Ohio and Illinois to gradually decreasing business. We always left a favorable impression, so much so that John Albaugh who was then managing the leading theatre at Albany wired me for a return date. I accepted with avidity, as it meant a week's rest and a possible relief from bad business. Upon our arrival at Albany I received a telegram saying that Wolfe had sent his play, called "Hobbies" C. O. D. A thousand dollars was needed to get the manuscript from the confines of the post-office. A thousand dollars to me then looked like a million! Poor Eliza had saved enough from her earnings to enable her to put aside ten one thousand dollar government bonds. These I insisted she lock up in a safe deposit box the day after our marriage with instructions to tell no one of her hidden fortune nor ever to molest it unless we were starving. When the telegram arrived she insisted upon going down to New York and taking out one of the bonds with which to release our play. I would not give my consent and started out to try to borrow the money. I knew few people in Albany, but had two friends in Troy whom I thought I could rely upon to come to my rescue. One was a judge, the other a gambler. I found them both financially embarrassed, but between them they dug up a hundred dollars which they presented to me. My gambler friend suggested that I take the hundred dollars, go upstairs into a faro game in which he held a slight interest and try to win out. I reasoned that the hundred was of no use to me and determined to take a chance. I went into the gambling room, and bet the hundred dollars on the high card. It won. I let it stay and it won again, giving me four hundred dollars. I asked for a chair then and sat down. In ten minutes I had eleven hundred and fifty dollars! I immediately returned the hundred dollar loan, bought Eliza a bunch of lilacs, her favorite flower, went to the post-office and returned home with the much coveted manuscript.