Again the professors were urging me to become more "regular" and pointing out the great career that awaited me--if I only would work. There was some subsequent talk of sending the play to Osageville, Topeka, Kansas City.... But the faculty opposed it ... it would not be proper to send girls and boys out together, travelling about like a regular theatrical company. * * * * * As it had been said that I was going to take up the career of animal trainer,--after my going into the cage with the lions--so it was now pronounced, and reported in the papers--Travers saw to that--that I meditated a career as a professional actor.... * * * * * Gleeful, and vastly relieved, Professor Dineen slipped me twenty-five dollars out of his own pocket. Several fraternities showed indications of "rushing" me, after my star performance ... but my associations with the odd characters about town and the wild, ignorant farmers of the lower type that drove in each Saturday from the adjacent country, made them, at first, hesitate ... then utterly drop the idea.... * * * * * Broke, I now wrote a long letter to Jarvis Alexander Mackworth. I boldly complained of my poverty, inasmuch as it deterred me from my work. "I have now proven my case," I wrote him,--"my poems have appeared in the _Century_, in _Everybody's_, in _Munsey's_.... "I have acted, as well, as a professional in a first-rate play, by a great European dramatist ... giving Kansas the distinction of being the first to produce _Iistral_ on the American stage.... "_Now_ I want to finish my four-act play on Judas. To do so I must have enough to eat and a place to sleep, without being made to worry about it, for a year.... "Can't you help me to a millionaire?" Mackworth answered me generously, affectionately. In two weeks he had procured my millionaire ... Derek, of Chicago, the bathtub magnate ... how much could I get on with? I wrote that I could do with seven dollars a week.... Mackworth replied not to be a fool--that Derek was willing to make it fifteen, for a year's duration.... I replied that I could only take enough to fill my simplest wants.... Derek jocosely added fifty cents to the sum I asked--"for postage stamps"-- ... for one year, week in, week out, without a letter from me except those indicating changes of address, without sending me a word of advice, criticism, or condemnation, no matter what I got into ... Derek sent me that weekly stipend of seven dollars and fifty cents!... * * * * * I settled down to consecutive literary work.