The Fighting Man Author:William A. Brady Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: II Having got a name by this time, I immediately went off on my own hook and signed a contract to play a starring engagement at a ten-cent theater on Mission ... more »Street, which is now known as Morosco's. It was a place where they starred Pacific Coast favorites. I was to supply the piece and play the leading part and to receive ten per cent. of the gross receipts. The engagement was for two weeks. I opened in The Lights of London, playing "Seth Prene." I never shall forget how I felt when I saw my name in big blue letters over the door: "william A. Beady in Lights Of London." I used to stand on the opposite side of the street for hours and regard it with vast admiration and content. Really, I had arrived! I was an enormous success there and my engagement was extended from two weeks to twelve. When I quit I was two thousand seven hundred dollars ahead of the game. As I had no faith in banks, I used to carry this money with me in a little black bag slung over my shoulder like a bookmaker at the derby. I was a rolling stone. I slept wherever night overtook me. For eighteen months I carried this money in the little black bag through Arizona, Texas, Arkansas, Montana, Wyoming, down dark streets, in dangerous places like Tucson, Arizona—always with a six-shooter in my back pocket. But after a while my money got to be so bulky that I used to go and buy cashier's checks from different banks, payable to myself. It was wonderful the assortment of paper I acquired in this way. When I finally reached New York and was about to produce After Dark, I went to the Bank of the Metropolis and brought out this bunch of checks and certificates of deposit from almost every section of the United States. The receiving teller looked at me in amazement. "Anything the matter with them?" I asked. "They'r...« less