Theatre. That actor, then a popular variety hall performer and a member of the burlesque and travesty company maintained by Messrs. Weber & Fields at their theatre in New York,--in Broadway, between Twenty-ninth and Thirtieth streets,--had negotiated with Belasco, about August-September, 1900, relative to acting under his management and on November 2, that year, they entered into a formal agreement whereby Belasco undertook the direction of Warfield’s professional career. Their contract was made to cover a first period of three years: it provided that Warfield should be presented as a star, beginning about September or October, 1901, and that he should be paid a weekly salary of $300 and should receive, further, 20 per cent. of the net profits of his professional exploitation during the first year, 25 per cent. during the second year, 30 per cent. during the third year, and 50 per cent. thereafter, if the contract should be renewed. This engagement also expressly required Belasco “personally to supervise the performances to be given” by Warfield as well as to provide a play for him to act in. The professional alliance thus begun between Belasco and Warfield has proved, for both parties to it, one of the most fortunate ever made in the Theatre. The personal friendship between them began many years earlier: Belasco has given the following glimpse of its beginning: “There was an usher at the Bush Street Theatre--a bright little fellow with a most luminous smile. He is still small, and his smile is still luminous. I did not then know his name, but I had heard that among his family and friends he was quite an entertainer, being able to sing, to mimic and to recite. One day I was at home, in my front room on the top floor, when I heard a voice in the street below. I leaned out, and there on the corner, standing on a box which scarcely raised him above the gaping onlookers, was the little usher from the Bush Street Theatre, reciting to a curious crowd. I went down and stood near until he had finished. Then I went up to him and asked him his name. ‘Dave Warfield,’ said he, giving me the smile that lived long afterwards in _Herr von Barwig_, during all the rehearsals of ‘The Music Master,’ and that was our first meeting.”