How Selwyn Held Up Gillette.
"Then what do you think I did? I was desperate, you see. The fifty cents a performance I had been getting at the Herald Square as usher did not enable me to pile up a very big sum against a rainy day such as had now overtaken me. I determined to see Mr. Gillette himself. I found out that he was staying at the Plaza Hotel. I went up there, wrote on a card, 'Edgar Selwyn. Important,' and sent it up to him.
"Pretty soon the message came down that he would see me.
"'Well,' he said, when I appeared, 'what do you want?'
"'I want a job,' I answered.
"He was so taken aback at this that he hardly knew what to say for a minute. Then he told me that everything in the company was taken.
"'Oh, I don't want a regular part,' I explained. 'Just a chance to go on and work my way up.'
"'Oh, an extra man,' he said. 'I haven't anything to do with engaging those. You will have to see my stage manager about that.'
"I kept mum as an oyster about having already had an interview with that gentleman, and never turned a hair while Mr. Gillette took out his card and wrote on it an introduction to this individual for me. With this I went back to the Garrick, and handed it in with a lordly air; the stage manager thought it meant an order from Gillette to put me on, and he forthwith proceeded to dismiss some poor duffer he had already engaged, and put me on in his place at eight dollars a week.