As I have stated in my foreword, this book is not intended to adhere to any fixed plan. I am writing on subjects covering a wide latitude, many of which have been suggested by questions out of letters written to me by friendly spirits who like my picture plays. Although the facts relating to my theatrical career have been published over and over again, hardly a day goes by without receipt of letters on that subject.

The prevailing notion is that I come from a theatrical family and that I was educated for the stage. Nothing is further from the truth. My father was a lawyer with a knowledge of the drama such as few professionals have had. From the time I was able to eat I was fed on Shakespeare. When I was twelve years old I could recite the principal speeches in most of that gentleman’s plays.

My article in Photoplay some months ago gave the whole story in fewest words and the same is herewith appended.

My dramatic education was augmented by frequent contact with great actors. My father was a friend of Mansfield, Edwin Booth, Stuart Robson, John Drew, Frederick Warde and other famous actors who were his guests whenever they visited Denver.

I once asked Mr. Mansfield about the best way to prepare for the stage and he told me that there was no such thing as preparation for the stage; but that there were certain accomplishments that were essential to great success. These included a knowledge of fencing, painting and the French language. Modesty precludes a discussion of the result of following that advice. Suffice to say, I can defend myself fairly well with rapier or broadsword, I can tell a Corot from a Raphael without the aid of artificial devices, and I have made my way through France without being arrested or going hungry.

Writers who give advice to the ambitious usually cite experiences from their own book of life, but if any young man were to follow in my footsteps, he’d take a rather devious path to the stage and he’d have to travel some.

My parents were far from convinced that I was cut out for the stage, so I was sent to the Colorado School of Mines to become a mining engineer. But there didn’t seem to be any room in my head for calculus, trigonometry and such things. I could never master higher mathematics; therefore I could never be a mining engineer, so I quit.

Now I’m not desirous of inflicting a recital of my deficiencies on a magnanimous public; just trying to show that one may fail in many things before finding one’s niche in life. Certainly I failed in many ventures, even in my first attack on the American stage. The first onslaught didn’t even make a dent on that historic institution.

Important results have often hinged on trivial things. Tiny causes have had titanic effects. If a certain actor hadn’t been sent to jail in Minnesota a dozen and a half years ago, I wouldn’t now be writing this. If you are familiar with baseball—and the chances are nine in ten that you are—you know the meaning of the expression, “the breaks of the game.” Given two baseball teams of equal strength, victory will invariably perch on the banner of the side which “gets the breaks.”

It’s much the same on the stage or in business. Many a good player has been sedulously avoided by whatever fate it is that deals out fame, because the “breaks” have been against him. Conversely, many a mediocre—or even worse player, has tasted all the fruits of victory because he “got the breaks,” as they say on the diamond. But don’t think I’m going to classify myself, because I’m not. Give it any name you like—even modesty.

Just where I would have wound up had it not been for a strange quirk of fate, of course no one can tell, but it was the misfortune of a fellow player that gave me the big chance I was looking for. Perhaps it was an indiscretion rather than a misfortune. But whatever it was, the victim of the circumstance found himself in jail on the day we were scheduled to treat the natives of Duluth, Minn., to a rendition of “Hamlet.”

Now I’m not going to tell you how the star couldn’t show up and I stepped into the breach and soliloquoyed all over the stage to the thunderous applause of the Northmen; that would be too conventional. Strangely enough I hadn’t set my sights that high. But I did want to play Laertes and my colleague having run afoul of some offense which was the subject of a chapter of the Minnesota Penal Code, I played it that night. Well, to make a long story short, I played the part so well (?) that it only took about ten years more to become a star on Broadway, the ultimate goal of all who choose the way of the footlights. Seriously, however, that was my chance and I took full advantage of it.

Perhaps the greatest pleasure I get out of my work for the screen is contained in the daily mail bag. Letters come from everywhere, not only this country, but from such far-off places as Australia. By the way, I believe they are more enthusiastic over the screen in the Antipodes than they are in this country, proportionately speaking.

One of the most frequent questions I am asked to answer is that relating to success in athletics.

It may sound strange to some of those who have been following my work on the screen, but I was a failure as an athlete. In college at the Colorado School of Mines I did not excel in any particular branch of sports. I went in for nearly everything, but the student body never wrote or sang any songs about me. I never came up in the ninth with the score three to nothing against us, with three men on base, and put the ball over the fence. I never even ran the length of the field with the pigskin and scored the winning touchdown with only fifteen seconds of play left.

When I went to Harvard later I still was active in athletics, but while just about able to get by in most of the games, I never got the spotlight in any specific instances. It might have been different had I remained, but the call of the footlights was too insistent.

There is one rule which every athlete must follow to be successful. Be clean in mind and body. For a starter, I know of no better advice.

I am not much given to preaching, but if I ever took it up as a vocation, I would preach cleanliness first and most.

The boy who wishes to get to the front in athletics must adopt a program of mental and bodily cleanliness.

Perhaps the greatest foe to athletic success, among young college men is strong drink. Personally I have never tasted liquor of any sort.

It was my mother’s influence that was responsible for that, as I promised her when I was eight years old that I would never drink. I might state, parenthetically and without violating a confidence, that my family tree had several decorations consisting of ambitious men who had sought valiantly, if futilely, to decrease the visible supply of liquor. I do not wish to take a great amount of credit for my abstention. Really, more credit is due to a person who has fallen under its influence and fought his way out; but I know that the keeping of my promise to my mother has had a powerful effect on my life and my career.