Page:Once a Clown, Always a Clown.djvu/97

Rh get the company to Chicago, neither did I know where I could get it with any certainty. Delia Fox overheard a whispered conversation between B. D. Stevens, my personal manager, and me. That evening I found a note in my box at the hotel. It contained eight hundred dollars, her savings of the season, and a note that read:

"Please accept this and don't make a fuss about it."

We did accept it, the only occasion on which I ever borrowed money from a woman, and signed a receipt for it. The receipt came back torn in fragments and with a note that said: "Friends do not do business on this basis."

We returned the $800 to her in Chicago and finished out the season with a profit.

The next season Miss Fox was my leading woman in "Wang", the first great success of either of us. "Wang", which was rather burletta than light opera, was a great entertainment of its kind. I played it two seasons, should have played it four, revived it three times in later years, and it has been played repeatedly by others. J. Cheever Goodwin and Woolson Morse wrote the piece. With characteristic irresponsibility, Goodwin sold all his interest for fifty dollars a week, and made only a bare