Your
professional gambler--for musical-comedy producing is an especially
sporting form of gambling and nothing else--assesses his chances in
advance, decides coolly whether they are worth taking or not, and then,
with a steely indifference awaits the event. The amateur, on the
contrary, is always fluttering between an insane confidence and a
shuddering despair; between a reckless disregard of money and a foolish
attempt to save it. It had been in one of their hot fits that the owners
of _The Girl Up-stairs_ had retained Galbraith. The news item Rose had
read had not exceeded truth in saying that he was one of the three
greatest directors in the country. They couldn't have got him out to
Chicago at all but for the chance that he was, just then, at the end of
a long-time contract with the Shumans and holding off for better terms
before he signed a new one. The owners were staggered at the prices they
had to pay him, at that, but they recovered and were still blowing warm
when they authorized him to engage Devereux, Stewart, Astor and McGill
(McGill was the chief comedian, the Cosmetic King) for all of these were
high-priced people.
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