ings.

My mother reminded him that I came naturally by my strolling propensities. Was I not a harlequin's son? 'Little Wandering Feet,' she called me. Wandering Feet wandered to a circus. He left town with it and became a bareback rider and a miniature clown, imitating the antics of an older clown. It was great fun until I became ill and the circus had to leave me behind in a country town. I would have died but for the clown who remained behind with me. Dear Walter Kingsley! He earned enough to

feed us both by acting the clown in the streets, jesting, tumbling and singing for pennies. He Dursed me through the fever. He contracted it from me-and died of it.

"The two heroes of my boyhood were Father Maguire, and a merry clown who gave his life for a runaway boy."

He returned to his home, and, for the time, cured of his wanderings, he listened to more stories by his mother. She told him about his uncle-the man whose first name had been given to him, Davido James. He was an actor.

"And so I should like to be, mother," said young David.

recited with a realism that awed and delighted his school fellows. But their admiration was his temporary undoing.

Having secured his first chance as an actor, a three-line part in "The Lion of Nubia," he walked on the stage to a hubhub created by his admirers. Their shrieks for "Davey!" and "The Madman!" stopped the action of the play. John Woodward, the manager of the theater, discharged young Belasco for causing this disgraceful riot.

Thus early was the child chastened. Snubs were his portion. A beautiful child and an unobtrusive one, his eyes of the dreamer seemed

to irritate the practical folk who represented the business side of the theater. Day dreams were accounted by them indolence. The habit of reverie was a fault to be corrected, harshly if need be.

Nevertheless he grew out of his humble post of call boy and became a prompter, an assistant stage manager, then a stage manager. His youth was a detriment in the eyes of haughty visiting stars who came to the Baldwin Theater, San Francisco. Imperious Rose Coghlan, then the highest-salaried actress on the American stage, surveyed the slim, dark-eyed lad and said, "That boy direct me? Never." Yet in five minutes he had won her by his diplomacy. "I am older than I look, Miss Coghlan, and I will be honored by any suggestions you wish to make." In an hour they were friends. Forty years after that encounter she was to appear in one of his most masterly productions, "Du Barry," rehearsing submissively and happily in his own theater, The Belasco, in New York, the world's metropolis.

J

L

Forced to Begin Again

AMES A. HERNE came upon him in the dusk of the Baldwin Theater wings, scribbling notes of his play, "Chums." Mr. Herne asked him about it and said, "Come east with my wife and me. We will produce in Chicago." Disaster followed upon hope. The company stranded in Chicago. Young David Belasco pushed on to New York. Followed the uneasy slumber on the benches in Union Square.

He returned to San Francisco and began again, placed his foot upon the bottom rung of the ladder. He wrote "La Belle Russe." Fearing the prophet might be decried in his own city, he produced the play under a false name. When the press received it warmly and one bilious critic wrote, "Ambitious Davey Belasco would do well to study the stagecraft of this master," the youth claimed his own. The afternoon papers carried 'scare heads" about the Native Son of the Golden West who had written a brilliant drama.

H

Sold a Play for $1,500

E returned to New York. This time fate and his own doggedness granted him a long stay. He sold "La Belle Russe" to Lester Wallack.

"I received fifteen hundred dollars for it," he told me. "It was pointed out to me that the play might fail and I would get nothing. I gladly accepted the money. It was more than I had ever seen in my life.

"I was advised to call on the Mallorys. They

were brothers who owned The Churchman, the organ of the Episcopal Church. I bound myself to them, practically mortgaged myself to them, for five years, at thirty-five dollars a week, I worked as stage director all day, from ten in the morning until twelve at night. Then I went to my rented room on Twenty-fourth Street. Leander Richardson was my neighbor in the house. He said he used to feel me at work until morning, on the other side of the wall. I wrote from twelve until eight. In that way I wrote 'May Blossom.' It was put on at the Madison Square Theater. I received five dollars a week for royalties every performance given-that is, if there were seven performances a week, I received thirty-five dollars. The Mallory brothers were under no obligation to give me that, for I had voluntarily mortgaged myself to them. When my contract had expired I went to the old Lyceum Theater in the same capacity. Steele Mackaye engaged me to direct his play, 'Dacula.' We fell out. He said, 'I am a genius and you are a genius. Two geniuses in one production are too many.' So I was out. When I did go to the Lyceum it was with Daniel Frohman."

B

How He Makes Work a Pleasure

ELASCO wrote more plays, most of them being successful. Someone offered to build him a theater. He answered, "No. My friend, Charles Frohman, wants a theater. Build it for him. I will look after the productions." So it was that he directed "The Girl I Left Behind Me," the play which opened the Empire Theater.

He had attained fame, but not yet financial success. That arrived late. It was the last of the rewards to come.

"Financial problems, far greater than the artistic ones, long faced me for solution," he said to me. "When I produced Du Barry if I had not succeeded I would have been so deeply in debt that I could never have gotten out. When I took the Republic Theater, New York, and remodeled and named it it was the same. I had given a home to Mrs. Belasco. I said to her, 'I need a theater. I can't succeed without it.' She agreed with me that we were justified in risking our home for the venture. I placed a mortgage of twenty thousand dollars on it."

Now follow his own attempts to extract from his career the secrets of his success.

"I am ambitious. I have a deeper affection for my work than for anything else in the world. I don't take two hours of pleasure outside it in a year. They are enough. I have worked eighty-five hours continuously before the open(Continued on page 147)

J

"OHN L. SULLIVAN, in his prime, was such a colossal figure that, like Hercules, he conquered without striking a blow. Many younger and smaller pugilists who challenged him were so terrified at the sight of his tremendous physique, his powerful muscles, and his allconquering air as he entered the ring, that they were beaten before they exchanged a bout with the giant. Without a blow he had conquered them mentally, and, after that, the result was certain, for when a man is conquered mentally his physical conquest is easy.

rent and draws more poverty to you. It is the operation of the same law which attracts good things, a better environment, to those who think abundance, prosperity, who are convinced that they are going to be well off, and work confidently, hopefully, toward that end.

It is their fear of the giant, Poverty, their expectation of being overcome by it, that saps the strength and nullifies the resisting power of multitudes of people, so that often, without striking a blow or making any serious effort to conquer, they become poverty's slaves.

If poor people would only turn about and, instead of facing toward failure and despair, would face toward hope and expectancy of good things to come to them; if they would only have faith in the future, faith in themselves, in their ability to win out; if they would only realize that their opportunity is more in themselves than in conditions, they would very quickly get into a better environment. By constantly thinking down, rolling hard luck stories under their tongues, they are building those models into their lives, erecting a wall between themselves and prosperity. If they would only turn their minds in the right direction they could immediately improve their appearance and their chances without a cent more money.

my best.

Before we can be conquered by poverty, we must, first of all, be poor mentally. The majority of poor people remain poor because they are mental paupers to begin with. They don't believe they are ever going to be well off. Fate, conditions, are against them; they were born poor and they are always going to be poor-that is their unvarying trend of thought. Go among the very poor in the slums of a great city, and you will find them always talking poverty, bewailing their fate, their hard luck, the cruelty of society to them. They will tell you that they are ground down by the upper classes, by their employers, by an unjust order of things which they can't change. They think of themselves as victims instead of victors, as conquered instead of conquerors.

O

NE morning recently, coming in to my office, I sat beside a middle-aged woman, with a very intelligent face, but with a sad, hopeless expression. She was dressed very poorly. Her hat was not only very old-fashioned but all out of shape. Her coat was in a similar condition, old and frayed at the sleeves, and sadly in need of a thorough brushing. Her shoes were very much worn and, in keeping with the rest of her clothing, very much soiled. Her whole appearance expressed not only poverty but discouragement. She appeared to have settled into a state of passivity, of resignation to her povertystricken condition, which she evidently felt she could not change. The helpless expression on her face showed that.

Now I know many women just as poor as she who would make a much better appearance with the very clothes she wore. She certainly could

have pressed her hat back into shape and brushed her coat and shoes, and she could have held herself erect instead of letting her shoulders bend over in a discouraged droop. In fact, a little care, a little more alertness, a little effort to brush up mentally as well as physically would have improved her appearance fifty per cent. I longed to speak to her and tell her how much she could do to change her condition and prospects without spending a cent of money.

Multitudes of people who work hard and try hard in every way to get on would be shocked if they could see a mental picture of themselves heading toward the poorhouse, in fact, as they are in thought. They do not know that by an inexorable law they head toward their mental attitude; that when they carry about with them a poorhouse atmosphere; when they continually talk poverty and suggest it by their slovenly dress, appearance and environment; when they predict that there is nothing for them but poverty, that no matter what do they will always be poor, they do not know that their doubts and fears and poverty-stricken convictions are hurrying them to the poorhouse. They do not know that as long as they hold such thoughts they cannot possibly head toward the goal of prosperity. These negatives are all pushing them the other way.

If these people could only be taught by psychological experts, prosperity experts, to reverse their thoughts, to

turn about face, mentally, and head toward the prosperity goal, never to allow themselves to talk or think of poverty, and to erase, so far as possible, every poverty suggestion in their dress, in their appearance, in their environment, how quickly their conditions would be revolutionized!

So long as you carry around

poorhouse atmosphere

you cannot head toward prosperity.

HE poverty thought is a colossal giant wrestling with human beings and overcoming multitudes of them. It is only those who know the secret hold who can hope to escape the fatal blow of this giant.

The fear of poverty is its greatest power. That is what gives it its stranglehold on the masses. Get rid of your fear of it, my friend. Let the prosperity thought take the place of the poverty thought in your mind. If you have been unfortunate, don't let discouragement get hold of you.