Page:O'Higgins--From the life.djvu/78

 He had been an East Side boy, out of the Ghetto—an office-boy in a theatrical agency, a messenger- boy and assistant in a box-office, where he finally became treasurer. While he was still behind the ticket-wicket he rented the theater for a Hungarian violinist who had come to this country unknown, in the steerage. The violinist startled the critics with a brilliant and poetical virtuosity, and charmed a fortune into his own pockets and his manager's. The production of my friend's play was to be the entrance of this coming theatrical magnate into "the legitimate." And nothing less like a theatrical magnate could be imagined.

He was the embodiment of quiet, plaintive-looking, white-faced silence, with an unblinking eye and an impersonal voice. And he is still that, although he now divides the control of the American stage with what is left of the Big Three. He is a study. I believe his success is due to the fact that he is so pathetic, so apparently trusting, and so appealing, that the Big Three assisted him out of mere charity. As a matter of fact, he is as crafty in business as a society woman. He breaks contracts like a tearful widow when he is losing money by them. When it is the other party to the contract who is losing he can be as chalkily indifferent and implacable as a Chinaman.

Jane Shore discovered in him the soul of a musician. It had been his first ambition to be a violinist; all that he could save from his earnings as an office-