"Gillette, tell your sister that you are killing me."
With the martyrdom of incessant pain came a ripening of the man's character. Frohman developed a great admiration for Lincoln. Often he would ask Gillette to read him the famous "Gettysburg Address." Simple, haunting melodies like "The Lost Chord" took hold of him. Marie Doro was frequently summoned to play it for him on the piano. Although his courage did not falter, he looked upon men and events with a larger and deeper philosophy.
During that first critical stage of the rheumatism he sank very low. His two devoted friends, Dillingham and Paul Potter, came to him daily. Each had his regular watch. Dillingham came in the morning and read and talked with the invalid for hours. He managed to bring a new story or a fresh joke every day.
Potter reported at nine in the evening and remained until two o'clock in the morning, or at whatever hour sleep came to the relief of the sick man. One of the compensations of those long vigils was the phonograph. Frohman was very fond of a tune called "Alexander's Rag-Time Band." The nurse would put this record in the machine and then leave. When it ran out, Potter, who never could learn how to renew the instrument, simply turned the crank again. There were many nights when Frohman listened to this famous rag-time song not less than twenty times. But he did not mind it.
In his illness Frohman was like a child. He was afraid of the night. He begged Potter to tell him stories, and the author of so many plays spun and unfolded weird and wonderful tales of travel and adventure. Like a child, too, Frohman kept on saying, "More, more," and often Potter went on talking into the dawn.
Potter, like all his comrades in that small and devoted group of Frohman intimates, did his utmost to shield his friend from hurt. When Frohman launched a new play during those bedridden days Potter would wait until the so-called "bull-dog" editions of the morning papers (the very earliest ones) were out. Then he would go down to the street and get them. If the notice was favorable he would read it to Frohman. If it was unfriendly Potter would say that the paper was not yet out, preferring that the manager read the bad news when it was broad daylight and it could not interfere with his sleep.
The humor and comradeship which always marked Frohman's close personal relations were not lacking in those nights when the life of the valiant little man hung by a thread. When all other means of inducing sleep failed, Potter found a sure cure for insomnia.
"Just as soon as I talked to Frohman about my own dramatic projects," he says, "he would fall asleep. So, when the night grew long and the travel stories failed, and even 'Alexander's Rag-Time Band' grew stale, I would start off by saying: 'I have a new play in mind. This is the way the plot goes.' Then Frohman's eyes would close; before long he would be asleep, and I crept noiselessly out."
Occasionally during those long conflicts with pain Frohman saw through the glass darkly. His intense and constant suffering, for the time, put iron into his well-nigh indomitable soul.
"I'm all in," he would say to Potter. "The luck is against me. The star system has killed my judgment. I no longer know a good play from a bad. The sooner they 'scrap' me the better."