The Argosy, Christmas 1912 — page 242: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

228 fingers. Watching them, Millie got the fidgets, and she, too, began to gnaw at her fingers. She didn’t know why, but it seemed the thing to do. No one spoke—that was the awful part of it. They all seemed so un- friendly. They just sat and sat and sat. Sometimes one would get up and silently slink away, and the place would be taken by one of the standees. The actress-to-be did not see that this was getting her anywhere, so she got to her feet and went through a swing-gate that gave admittance to the brighter end of the room. No one said anything. Millie paused and waited. Nothing happened. She gathered courage and went forward to a woman who sat busily thumping her desk with a paper-cutter. Millie spoke to her, and eked if she would get her a good engagement. She laid particular emphasis on the “good,” for she had no intention of being side- tracked with some foolish little cheap company. The woman replied without raising her eyes from her absorbing occupa- tion of thumping: “ Do you sing? ”’ “ No’am.” “Then you will have to say your say to Mrs. F Good morning.” She said this last with an upward in- flection of the voice which was so cleverly managed that it seemed to sweep the young woman off her feet and waft her to the other desk which backed up against this one. The woman at this desk looked cross and dyspeptic, and Millie was begin- ning to be tired out with agents; but she spoke sweetly to this weary person who gazed at her with a strange ex- pression, and asked dully: ‘ What ex- perience have you had?” Millie Ferguson was now in her ele- ment. She explained that she had played in a lot of things. Before she came near the end of the long-drawn breath on which she was winging such names as Shaw and Wilde and Ibsen, the woman cut her short with: “ Where? ” THE ARGOSY. Millie told her, and the woman asked acidly: “ Amateurs? ” 66 Yes.”’ “The woman snapped out: “I can- not use you, then.” So Miss Ferguson haughtily with- drew and went to another agency. This time she did not have to wait. The agent was aman. He took her at once into his holy of holies, and there he attempted to squeeze her hand, and he said things, too; so Millie left, her face flushed and her eyes dewy. After this little experience she went on the trail of the managers. One was away; another was too busy to see her. Those that she did succeed in seeing were either “all booked” or had no need of her services. Some of them were nice, but most she considered horrid.” And this sort of thing went on for a week. By that time she was tired, and began to get discouraged, but she fought against it. She came by a newspaper in which she found a long list of managers’ names and addresses, and these she copied in her little book and began her trips all over again. Somehow now when she went into an office she could not talk when it came her turn; and she would always whisper her request in the stolid face of an impatient per- spiring man usually with a hooked nose. At night frequently she cried. No one seemed to want her, and yet no one ever asked her to recite even one thing, although she knew many “ pieces’ which had never failed to win a round of applause in her native town. She continued the search for three weary weeks more. Her money was al- most gone, and she looked ill and worn. Her clothes grew shabby, and her shoes were off at the side of the heel. More than once she had grown panic-stricken when she began to think of what would become of her when her money gave out. She no longer had sufficient to return home. She CoOMmicbook CO