Our director, already on the lookout for a new type, heard of a clever girl out at the Vitagraph, who rode a horse like a western cowboy and who had had good movie training under Mr. Rainous. He wanted to see her on the screen before an audience. Set up in a store on Amsterdam Avenue and 160th Street was a little motion picture place. It had a rough wooden floor, common kitchen chairs, and the reels unwound to the tin-panny shriek of a pianola. After some watchful waiting, the stand outside the theatre--the sort of thing sandwich men carry--finally announced “The Dispatch Bearer,” a Vitagraph with Florence Lawrence. So, living near by, after dinner one night we rushed over to see it. It was a good picture. Mr. Griffith concluded he would like to work with Mr. Rainous for a while and learn about the movies. For one could easily see that besides having ability Florence Lawrence had had excellent direction. Well, David stole little Florrie, he did. With Harry Salter as support in his nefarious errand, he called on Miss Lawrence and her mother, and offered the Vitagraph girl twenty-five dollars a week, regular. She had been receiving fifteen at Vitagraph playing leading parts, sewing costumes, and mending scenery canvas. She was quite overcome with Mr. Griffith’s spectacular offer, readily accepted, and by way of celebrating her new prosperity, she drew forth from under the bed in the little boarding-house room, her trombone--or was it a violin?--and played several selections. As a child, Miss Lawrence, managed by her mother, and starred as “Baby Flo, the child wonder-whistler” had toured the country, playing even the “tanks.” Immediately she joined the Biograph, Florence Lawrence was given a grand rush. But she never minded work. The movies were as the breath of life to her. When she wasn’t working in a picture, she was in some movie theatre seeing a picture. After the hardest day, she was never too tired to see the new release and if work ran into the night hours, between scenes she’d wipe off the make-up and slip out to a movie show. Her pictures became tremendously popular, and soon all over the country Miss Lawrence was known as “The Biograph Girl.” It was some years before the company allowed the names of actors to be given out, hence “Biograph Girl” was the only intelligent appellation. After Miss Lawrence left Biograph, Mary Pickford fell heir to the title. Miss Lawrence’s early releases show her versatility. Two every week for a time: “Betrayed by a Handprint,” “The Girl and the Outlaw,” “Behind the Scenes,” “The Heart of Oyama,” “Concealing a Burglar,” “Romance of a Jewess,” “The Planter’s Wife,” “The Vaquero’s Vow,” “The Call of the Wild,” “The Zulu’s Heart,” “The Song of the Shirt,” “Taming of the Shrew,” “The Ingrate,” “A Woman’s Way.”