If Perkins had been getting the ads., all would still have been well; but new breakfast foods cropped up faster than one a month, and I couldn't bear to see them wait their turn for the breakfast scene. There were Malta-Vita and Force and Try-a-Bita and Cero-Fruto and Kapl-Flakes and Wheat-Meat, and a lot more; and I signed them all. It was thoughtless of me. I admit that now, but I was a little careless in those days. When our reviser revised the play to get all those breakfast foods in, he shook his head. He said the audience might like it, but he had his doubts about the cast. He said he did not believe any cast on earth could eat thirteen consecutive breakfast foods, and smile the smile that won't. He said it was easy enough for him to write thirteen distinct lyrics about breakfast foods, but that to him it seemed that by the time the chorus had downed breakfast food number twelve, it would be so full of oats, peas, beans, and barley that it couldn't gurgle. I am sorry to say he was right. We had a pretty tough-stomached troup; and they might have been able to handle the thirteen breakfast foods, especially as most of the foods were already from one-half to three-quarters digested as they were sold, but we had a few other lunchibles in the play already. [Illustration: 158] That year the ads. were running principally to automobiles, correspondence schools, and food stuffs; and we had to take in the food stuffs or not sell our space. As I look back upon it, I cannot blame the cast, although I was angry enough at the time. When a high-bred actress has eaten two kinds of soup, a sugar-cured ham, self-rising flour, air-tight soda crackers, three infant foods, two patent jellies, fifty-seven varieties of pickles, clam chowder, devilled lobster, a salad dressing, and some beef extract, she is not apt to hanker for thirteen varieties of breakfast food. She is more likely to look upon them with cold disdain. Ho matter how good a breakfast food may be by itself and in the morning, it is somewhat unlovely at ten at night after devilled lobster and fifty-seven varieties of pickles. At the sight of it the star, instead of gaily carolling,-- “Joy! joy! isn't it nice To eat Cook's Flaked Rice,” is apt to gag. After about six breakfast foods, her epiglottis and thorax will shut up shop and begin to turn wrong side out with a sickly gurgle. The whole company struck. They very sensibly remarked that if the troup had to keep up that sort of thing and eat every new breakfast food that came out, the things needed were not men and women, but a herd of cows. They gave me notice that they one and all intended to leave at the end of the week, and that they positively refused to eat anything whatever on the stage. I went to Perkins and told him the game was up--that it was good while it lasted, but that it was all over now. I said that the best thing we could do was to sell our lease on the theatre and cancel our ad. contracts.