It took many an Egg to have Lila properly Conservatoried.
At last she came home with a Diploma showing that she was an Actress.
After that, she merely needed a Play and a Company and a lot of Scenery and a Manager and a Theater and the soft old Public buying of the Scalpers, in order to realize her modest Ambition to become a Real Star.
She took her Diploma and the Local Press Notices up to New York to see what she could get on them, and found 10,000 other incipient Modjedskas hitting the worn Trail that led from one Agency to another.
Artistic Temperaments were more Abundant than Lamp Posts, and getting an Audience with a Big Gun was just as easy as Opening a Time-Lock with a Hat Pin.
She had an offer at the Hippodrome to walk in front of an Elephant, waving a prop Palm, but she spurned it, because she was ready to do Desdemona at a Moment's Notice.
As for the Laudatory Article written by a would-be Willie Winter of the wild and wooly West, she couldn't find any one in the neighborhood of 42nd Street who had even heard of the Tank Town in which her Folks were so Prominent.
In order to get Experience, she signed up with a No. 4 Company, playing the Part of the deaf-and-dumb lady who crosses the Stage and removes the Tea Things early in the Second Act.
When the Troupe went on the Rocks at Mauch Chunk, Penna., the erstwhile
Favorite of the Pocahontas Club found herself seated on a Trunk marked
"Theater" standing off a Deputy Sheriff and waiting for an Answer to
her Wire.
The First Old Woman, who remembered Edwin Booth, came and sat beside her.