You can begin your theatrical career in the box-office of Hooley's Theater in Brooklyn. Take a ferry and look at the theater. Hooley is going to rent it to us for the summer. Your work will begin as ticket-seller. You will have to sell 25, 50, and 75 cent tickets, and they will all be hard tickets, that is, no reserved seats. Get some pasteboard slips or a pack of cards and practise handling them. Your success will lie in the swiftness with which you can hand them out. With these rehearsals you will be able to do your work well and look like a professional.
Charles immediately bought a pack of the thickest playing-cards he could find and began to practise with them. Soon he became an expert shuffler. Often he used his father's cigar counter for a make-believe box-office sill, and across it he handed out the pasteboards to imaginary patrons. A dozen times he went over to Brooklyn and gazed with eager expectancy at the old theater, destined, by reason of his association with it, to be a historic landmark in the annals of American amusement.
He wrote Gustave almost immediately:
I will be ready when the time comes.
That great moment arrived the first Monday in August, 1874. Charles could scarcely contain his impatience. So well had the publicity work for the performance been done by the new advance-agent that when the boy (he was just fourteen) raised the window of the box-office at seven o'clock there was a long line waiting to buy tickets. The final word of injunction from Gustave was:
"Remember, Charley, you must be careful, because you will be personally responsible for any shortage in cash when you balance up."
The house was sold out. When Gustave asked him, after the count-up, if he was short, the eager-faced lad replied:
"I am not short—I am fifty cents over!"
"Then you can keep that as a reward for your good work," said Gustave.
Callender was on hand the opening night. He watched the boy in the box-office with, an amused and lively interest. When Charles had finished selling tickets, Callender stepped up to him with a smile on his face and said: