“I should say it did! Look at that!” Brainard pointed to a sack of mail that had been poured out over the library table. “And there’s a lot more, they tell me, at the post office. We shall have to open an office and hire some clerks, or chuck it into the fire.”
“It all helps,” the ex-reporter affirmed, dipping his hands into the mass with zest. “You don’t understand the American public yet. It has to have Romance with a capital R to sugar-coat any idea before it will swallow it.”
“There was pretty nearly everything in yesterday’s mail, from an offer of marriage to a recipe for making a successful play, not to mention one hundred and eighty-seven specimens of original American drama.”
“Here are a few more of the same sort,” the secretary laughed, tossing out a handful of bulky packages. “The literary committee will have something to do when it finds time. That’s me!”
He tossed the manuscripts into a corner.
“The thirty-first application for position as leading lady from an actress ‘of established reputation, at present on the Oregon circuit’—that goes to Mac’s pile,” he remarked, throwing the lady’s letter into a basket. “Proposal of marriage, marked ‘strictly personal,’” he continued, handing over an envelope to his employer. “We must get out some printed forms for acknowledgment of these—one for marriage, one for plays, and one for positions in the company.”
“If this is publicity, let’s try for privacy!” Brainard groaned, tearing the marriage letter into bits.
“Here’s a new note!” Farson exclaimed, pausing in his swift disposal of the mail to read aloud a letter.
“Gents:
“I saw in yesterday’s Kansas City papers a piece about your new theater. I think your idea is fine! It’s all right! Have you got a part for a beginner who will take anything or everything, but wants to begin? I know I’ve got stuff in me, and I must see New York. Please reply.
“Yours anxiously,
“Louisiana Delacourt,
“P. O. Box 8, Iole, Kansas.”
“I think that Louisiana should get a chance to see New York,” Brainard observed.