Why actors who specialize in the legitimate should be invariably careless in their personal appearance has yet to be explained. Their fellow-artists, who play in modern comedy, usually appear on the street trig and well groomed. Their clothes, cut in the latest fashion, and the way they wear them, constitute valuable factors in their success. But the Benvolios, the Mercutios and Horatios and other heroes of the romantic and standard dramas, are, in private life, a queer and sad-looking lot. Their excuse may be that for the historical dramas the manager furnishes the costumes, whereas for the modern play the player has to provide his own. This particular actor wore a faded Fedora hat, his trousers were baggy at the knee, and he tapped impatiently on the pavement with a cheap little cane. His attitude was one of general discouragement, which was not surprising, seeing that after playing Shakespeare in the one-night stands all season, he found himself stranded on Broadway without a cent. While he confided his troubles to his old friend, Jim Weston, he cast envious glances at other fellow actors, more fortunate than he, who were entering a red-curtained chop house close by. As his olfactory organ caught the delicious odors of grilling steaks and juicy roasts, he winced. That morning he had breakfasted but meagerly, and when again the hunger pangs seized him there would be no chop house for him. He must slink into the little dairy round the corner and lining-up at the lunch counter, together with a dozen other thespians in like straits, shamefacedly order a glass of milk and piece of pie. "Do you think it's any merrier for me?" exclaimed Weston, after he had listened to the other's hard-luck story. "Why, man alive, I'm ready to give up. I've tramped Broadway for nine weeks, until every flagstone gives me the laugh when it sees my feet coming. It's something fierce!" Jim Weston was only one of the many hundred human derelicts cast away on the theatrical strand. An advance agent of the old school, he found himself at the age of fifty outdistanced by younger and more active men. In the three decades of his life, which he had devoted to the service of the stage, he had seen the gradual evolution of the theatrical business. The old-time circus and minstrel men had been pushed aside and younger men, more up-to-date in their methods, had taken their place. Jim realized that he was a back number, but he hung on just the same. He was too old now to begin learning a new trade. He had given all the energy of his youth to the service of the theatre and now he was older and not so active the theatre had gone back on him. Often he had thought of ending it all, there and then, but that he mused, was the coward's way. There was the "missis" and the "kids." He wasn't going to desert them. So day after day, he kept on tramping Broadway, haunting the agencies, in the hope of something turning up.