| INTRODUCTION |
| Wherein, at union rates, the author performs the common but popular musical feat known as "blowing one's own horn" | 13 |
| THE THEATER AT A GLANCE |
| Being a correspondence school education in the business of the playhouse that should enable the veriest tyro to become a Charles Frohman or a David Belasco | 19 |
| SOME PEOPLE I'VE LIED ABOUT |
| Being reminiscences of the author's nefarious but more or less innocuous career as a press agent | 48 |
| THE WRITING AND READING OF PLAYS |
| Being a discussion as to which pursuit is the more painful, with various entertaining and instructive remarks as to the method of following both | 90 |
| THE PERSONALITIES OF OUR PLAYWRIGHTS |
| Being an effort to outdo Ernest Thompson Seton and Charles G. D. Roberts at their own game—which is speaking literally | 122 |
| STAGE STRUCK |
| Being a diagnosis of the disease, and a description of its symptoms, which has the rare medical merit of attempting a cure at the same time | 164 |
| ON THE GREAT WHITE WAY |
| Being an account of intrepid explorations in the habitat of the creatures whose habits are set forth in the preceding chapters | 192 |
| WHAT HAPPENS AT REHEARSALS |
| Being something about the process by which performances are got ready for the pleasure of the public and the profit of the ticket speculators | 221 |
| THE ART OF "GETTING IT OVER" |
| Being the sort of title to suggest a treatise on suicide, whereas, in point of fact, this chapter merely confides all that the author doesn't know about acting | 262 |
| SOMETHING ABOUT "FIRST NIGHTS" |
| Wherein is shown that the opening of a new play is more hazardous than the opening of a jack-pot, and that theatrical production is a game of chance in comparison with which roulette and rouge-et-noir are al as tiddledewinks or old maid | 284 |
| IN VAUDEVILLE |
| Being inside information regarding a kind of entertainment at which one requires intelligence no more than the kitchen range | 316 |
| WITH THE PEOPLE "IN STOCK" |
| Concerning Camille, ice cream, spirituality, red silk tights, Blanche Bates, Thomas Betterton, second-hand plays, parochialism, matinee girls, Augustin Daly, and other interesting topics | 347 |
| SITTING IN JUDGMENT WITH THE GODS |
| Being an old manuscript with a new preface—the former dealing with a lost art, and the latter subtly suggesting who lost it | 378 |
| THE SMART SET ON THE STAGE |
| Wherein the author considers comedies of manners, and players who succeed illy in living up to them | 408 |
