In the company were Mr. Tully and his then wife, Eleanor Gates, the author; Emil Kreuske, for some years now “Bill Nigh,” the motion picture director; Milton Schwartz, who took to law and now practices in Hollywood; Dick Tully and his wife Olive Vail. Elmer Harris of the original college company did not go. Elmer is now partner to Frank E. Woods along with Thompson Buchanan in Mr. Wood’s new producing company. The recital at Sherman and Clay Hall on Sutter Street was a most ambitious effort. My job-hunting pal, Harriet Quimby, a girl I had met prowling about the theatres, concluded we were getting nowhere and time was fleeting. So we hit on a plan to give a recital in San Francisco’s Carnegie Hall, and invite the dramatic critics hoping they would come and give us good notices. The Homer Henley Quartette which we engaged would charge twenty dollars. The rent of the hall was twenty. We should have had in hand forty dollars, and between us we didn’t own forty cents. Harriet Quimby knew Arnold Genthe, and, appreciating her rare beauty, Mr. Genthe said he would make her photos for window display for nothing. Oscar Mauer did the same for me, gratis. Rugs and furniture we borrowed, and the costumes by advertising in the program, we rented cheaply. We understood only this much of politics: Jimmy Phelan, our Mayor (afterwards Senator James H. Phelan) was a very wealthy man, charitably disposed, and one day we summoned up sufficient courage to tell him our trouble. Most attentively and respectfully he heard us, and without a moment’s hesitation gave us the twenty. So we gave the recital. We sold enough tickets to pay the Homer Henleys, but not enough to pay the debt to Mr. Phelan. He’s never been paid these many years though I’ve thought of doing it often, and will do it some day. However, the critics came and they gave us good notices, but the recital didn’t seem to put much of a dent in our careers. Harriet Quimby soon achieved New York via _The Sunset Magazine_. In New York she “caught on,” and became dramatic critic on _Leslie’s Weekly_. The honor of being the first woman in America to receive an aviator’s license became hers, as also that of being the first woman to pilot a monoplane across the English Channel. That was in the spring of 1912, a few months before her death while flying over Boston Harbor. * * * * *