It _was_ great music, about the first syncopated music with a saxophone heard in that neck of the woods. There was a great horn into which the dancers, if they desired an encore, threw a silver dollar. There needed to be five particularly anxious dancers to get the expensive orchestra to repeat an orchestration. The dollars clicked down the horn into a sort of tin bucket on the floor below, and the loud jangle of the silver money could be easily heard by the dancers who would listen attentively for jangle number five, and then “On with the dance.” As the music finished for the first dance this night, the dancers stopped and with much excitement waited for the click of the silver dollars. Charlie Chaplin was out for a big time; also he wanted to worry Mr. Laemmle, and, one thing sure, he was not going to talk business this night. So he was the first to say, “This dance is worth an encore,” and he threw a silver dollar into the horn. It was perhaps the first time Mr. Chaplin had been known to spend money in public either for food or music, for every one was so tickled and flattered to have him as a guest that he never was given a chance to spend money. So Charlie’s Chaplin’s silver dollar nearly caused a riot on that dance floor. The guests hooted and screamed and those who knew him well enough and had been given stray bits of confidence, called out, “You cannot plant your first dollar now because you’ve spent it.” And Mr. Chaplin answered, “Oh, don’t you worry, I planted my first dollar some time ago.” Mr. Chaplin could never squander money; memories of lean days inhibited him from doing that. But he must hold off Mr. Laemmle; and he was enjoying the dance. Two other dollars had joined Charlie Chaplin’s first one, and clicked their way down the yawning chasm of the brass horn, and then a pause, but just for a second. Grabbing his blond partner, Mr. Chaplin threw the two needed dollars into the horn’s hungry maw, and the moaning saxaphone started off again while Mr. Laemmle looked sadly on. He never did secure the screen’s greatest funny man. In six months Charlie Chaplin’s rise to fame and fortune was phenomenal. Not only had a kind Providence richly endowed him, but he worked very hard, as genius usually does. Even back in those days, Mr. Chaplin often began his day making excursions with the milkman. From the cold gray morning hours of three and four until seven, the two would ramble through the poor districts, and while the milkman would be depositing his bottle of milk, Mr. Chaplin would hobnob with drunks and derelicts, and in the later hours, talk with the little children of the slums, drawing out a story here, getting a new character there, and making the tragic humorous when finally the story was given life on the screen. The story of “The Kid” as Mr. Chaplin and Jackie Coogan told it, was nearer the truth than any audience ever guessed. * * * * * The ups and downs of the movie world!