than I had imagined. Her hair was soft and light, her eyes deep blue, varying into gray, and the changing expressions of her earnest face were delightful. She was pale and tearful. ‘It has always been my wish to work for you,’ she said. I learned that her manager at the Garrick Theatre intended to ‘star’ her in a play, but she expressed a willingness to come with me if only in a ‘bit’ five lines long. I offered her the leading part of _Helen_ in ‘The Music Master,’ and she was delighted. I told her to go to Mr. Dean and make business arrangements. ‘I don’t care what salary I get,’ she exclaimed. ‘The only agreement I want is that you don’t change your mind.’ I insisted, however, that a contract be signed, and when Mr. Dean made it out she wanted to put her name to it at once, but I advised her to take it home and read it over. She took it away with her, but afterwards confessed that she stopped in a telegraph office on the way to her hotel and signed it!...” The first play in which Belasco presented Miss Starr as a leading performer, heading an important theatrical company--less than six months after he had seen her in “Gallops”--was “The Rose of the Rancho.” This piece is based on an earlier one, by Richard Walton Tully, called “Juanita,” which had been produced in Los Angeles with the excellent actor John H. Gilmour in the principal male part. Mr. Tully’s play was verbose, diffuse, and coarse in texture. Belasco, after once rejecting it, being in urgent need of a vehicle for Miss Starr, read it again and agreed to “accept it, provided I might have the privilege of rewriting it.” This “privilege” Belasco has exercised in many instances--to his loss and the immense advantage of various inconsequential and ingrateful amateurs of dramatic authorship. His stipulation was acceded to by Mr. Tully, and Belasco, working as usual under the stress of haste and the distraction of many projects, revised, curtailed, amended, and reconstructed “Juanita,” which, in its final form as “The Rose [Illustration: FRANCES STARR Inscription: “_To him who made me what I am and inspired what I hope to be,--with ever living love and gratitude._” Photograph by Strauss Payton. Belasco’s Collection. ] of the Rancho,” gained abundant success. It was first acted, under that name, at the Majestic Theatre, Boston, November 12, 1906, and was brought out in New York, at the Belasco Theatre, November 27: it held the stage there until June 29, 1907.