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Something in the silent, keen-eyed girl who was so near her own age attracted Blanche, and the two became good friends, spending many an hour together when the young person was not in school. In exchange for her thrilling stories of stage life, Blanche’s new friend would tell vivid tales which she had read in books, to all of which good-natured Blanche would listen with lazy interest, and at the finish of the narrative often exclaimed:

“You ought to be in a theater. You could act!”

Although this assertion was always met by determined silence, as her friend thought she was being made fun of, yet the young person did not fail to brood over the statement when she was alone. Could there be any truth in the statement, she wondered? Then came a marvelous event. Blanche hurried home from the theater one day to tell her young friend that extra ballet girls were wanted in their company. She must go at once and get engaged.

“But,” gasped the young person, “maybe they won’t take me!”

“Well,” answered Blanche, “I’ve coaxed your mother, and my mother says she’ll look out for you–so at any rate, go and see. I’ll take you to-morrow.”

To-morrow! “Dimly the agitated and awed young person seemed to see a way opening out before her, and again behind her locked door she knelt down and said ‘Dear God! Dear God!’ and got no further, because grief has so many words, and joy has so few.”

That was Friday, and the school term had closed that day. The next morning, with a heart beating almost to suffocation, the young person found herself on the way to the theater, with self-possessed Blanche, who led the way to the old Academy of Music. Entering the building, the girls went up-stairs, and as they reached the top step Blanche called to a small, dark man who was hurrying across the hall:

“Oh, Mr. Ellsler–wait a moment, please–I want to speak to you.”

The man stopped, but with an impatient frown, for as he himself afterward said in relating the story:

“I was much put out about a business matter, and was hastily crossing the corridor when Blanche called me, and I saw she had another girl in tow, a girl whose appearance in a theater was so droll I must have laughed had I not been more than a little cross. Her dress was quite short–she wore a pale-blue apron buttoned up the back, long braids tied at the ends with ribbons, and a brown straw hat, while she clutched desperately at the handle of the biggest umbrella I ever saw. Her eyes were distinctly blue and big with fright. Blanche gave her name, and said she wanted to go in the ballet. I instantly answered that she was too small–I wanted women, not children. Blanche was voluble, but the girl herself never spoke a single word. I glanced toward her and stopped. The hands that clutched the umbrella trembled–she raised her eyes and looked at me. I had noticed their blueness a moment before, now they were almost black, so swiftly had their pupils dilated, and slowly the tears rose in them. All the father in me shrank under the child’s bitter disappointment; all the actor in me thrilled at the power of expression in the girl’s face, and I hastily added:

“‘Oh, well, you may come back in a day or two, and if any one appears meantime who is short enough to march with you, I’ll take you on.’ Not until I had reached my office did I remember that the girl had not spoken a single word, but had won an engagement–for I knew I should engage her–with a pair of tear-filled eyes.”

As a result of his half-promise, three days later, the young person again presented herself at the theater, and was engaged for the term of two weeks to go on the stage in the marches and dances of a play called “The Seven Sisters,” for which she was to receive the large sum of fifty cents a night. She, who was later to be known as one of the great emotional actresses of her day, whose name was to be on every lip where the finest in dramatic art was appreciated, had begun to mount the ladder toward fame and fortune.