"Ten dollars."
"Why?"
"Our rules. Ten dollars a year bureau membership, and fifty per cent of first two weeks' salary."
"But what if—"
"We always place sooner or later."
"But in case—"
"Take this card down to the Union Family Theater, Union Square, and ask for Robert Visigoth. It's a two-a-day. If you don't do business with him, come back to-morrow morning."
A quick dozen of questions rushed to Lilly's lips, but instead she laid down a new ten-dollar bill, crammed the slip into her palm through the hole in her glove, and went out, the snapping torrent of typewriting already resumed.
The Union Family Theater was the first of a succession of variety houses that was to spread, first to Harlem, then Philadelphia, and later gird the country like a close-link chain. Vaudeville prefaced with stereopticon views, designed to appeal to the strict respectability of the most strictly respectable audiences in the world.
The high-class Rialto houses might pander to low-class comedy and Broadway take its entertainment broad, but Robert Visigoth laid the corner stone of subsequent fortunes when he decided that a ten-twenty-thirty vaudeville audience that smells sour of perspiration and strong foods demands entertainment as pink and as sweet as a baby's heel, and that a gunman in the gallery will catcall his prototype on the stage.