Had I even imagined myself born to the buskin, I suppose I would have taken up with the idea as enthusiastically as anyone. Fortunately, the footlights had never cast their glamour over me, and I had always regarded this venture as a makeshift and a stepping-stone. When I had done a few sums in addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, I suggested that the time was hardly ripe for such a scheme. We were doing very well as it was, among the smaller towns, where theatres had no season, and the population could not, and would not, support a regular company. As for playing the larger towns, I did not believe it could be done for a month yet; and, meanwhile, if we tried it, we would have abundant opportunity to drop our little capital and become hopelessly involved. I thought it would be the part of wisdom to keep on as we had been doing, playing on velvet, and week by week adding to our slender store; otherwise, I thought I could retire from the show business. To this view the boys finally and grumblingly consented, after having obtained my consent, by way of compromise, to hiring a hall at a fair-sized town not far away, and trying again the racket of a fine entertainment. I think I had a presentment of failure, and presentments are not things to be trifled with. Surely, nothing ever fell quite so flat as that night’s work. We had to procure a license, we had to put up five dollars in advance on the hall rent, our hotel bill was of respectable proportions, there were other incidental expenses—and we gave no show at all. There was no gang at the door that night, no rush for the front seats, no audience, no money, no nothing. A dozen boys and men presented themselves at the door, but the most of them were dead-heads. They filed dismally into the hall, and filed more dismally out again. The “house remained dark” after all. The Miltons concluded that it was more profitable to dismiss the audience and immediately “skip by the light of the moon” than to remain and wrestle with such complications as the balance of the hall rent, the hotel bill, and other like troubles which fate might send them. Though the venture had made considerable inroad on our capital, I cannot say that I was particularly cast down, being full of that exhilaration which comes from the ability and the right to say, “I told you so.” I objected, moreover, to the shirking of a bill which we had the means to pay without its causing us any serious financial embarrassment. Also, I was interested in the possible cause of our failure, which was a street fakir, whose harangue I had heard from the doorway of the hall, where I was in attendance. Up to this time any little efforts I had made upon the lines which I have so long followed with such great success, had been addressed to the individual rather than to the crowd. I had heard street talkers, to be sure, but had never analyzed their methods, or thought seriously of following the profession.