One thing was sure--the pictures were making money. The percentage told that story. What a thrill we got at the first peek at the royalty check each month. Made us nervous. Where were we headed? Sometimes we almost wished that financially we were not succeeding so well, for then we would have quitted the movies. But wouldn’t that have been a crazy thing to do? A year of fifty-two working weeks? At the rate we were going, we could keep at it for three years, and quit with twelve thousand in the bank, then David could write plays and realize his youthful ambition. We lived simply. When the royalty check before the end of the second year amounted to nine hundred and a thousand a month, we still maintained a thirty-five-dollar-a-month apartment. Never dreamed of getting stylish. No time for it. So each month there was a nice little roll to bank, and it was put right into the Bowery Savings Bank. The only trouble with a savings bank was they wouldn’t accept more than three thousand dollars, so we secured a list of them and I went the rounds depositing honest movie money with a rapidity quite unbelievable. [Illustration: A desert caravan of the early days. (_See p. 197_) ] [Illustration: From “The Last Drop of Water,” one of the first two-reelers, produced in San Fernando desert, with Jeanie Macpherson (seated, front row). (_See p. 197_) ] The Griffiths were not the only thrifty ones. When Mary Pickford was getting one hundred a week, her mother wept because she wouldn’t buy pretty clothes. At Mount Beacon this happened. One of the perky little ingénue-ish extra girls appeared in a frock decidedly not home-made. You could count on it that it had come either from Macy’s or Siegel-Cooper’s Eighteenth Street store, and that it had cost a whole week’s wages. Not much escaped Ma Smith’s eagle eye, and so she wailed: “I wish Mary would buy clothes like the other girls.” But Mary, the same simple, unaffected Mary that a year since had said “thank you” for her twenty-five, was quite contented to continue wearing the clothes her mama made her, and at that a few would do. [Illustration: Mabel Normand with Lee Dougherty, Jr., “off duty.” (_See p. 204_) ] A few years after this time I met Mary in Macy’s one summer day and hardly recognized her. She had grown thin and had acquired style. I admired her smart costume and said: “Nice suit, Mary, I’m looking for one. Mind telling me where you found it?” But Mary, with a note of boredom, so unlike the Mary I’d known, answered: “Oh, my aunt brought me six from Paris.” “Mary, you haven’t forgotten how we used to strike bargains with the salesman at Hearn’s on Fourteenth Street, have you?” “Oh,” said Mary, quickly coming back to earth and proving greatness but a dream, “wasn’t it fun? Let’s go over to the Astor and have tea.”