Guy Hammersley; or, Clearing his Name — page 57: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

48 GUY HAMMERSLEY. so far as it goes, and I appreciate most deeply the high, I fear me altogether too high value, you set upon my services, but what if the receipts are not sufficient to fi But here the colonel broke in with: ‘‘ Your pardon, madam, for interrupting, but you entirely miscon- ceive the nature of the enterprise which Iam about to inaugurate. Miss Farleigh is a great card, one cer- tain to draw immense houses. The English papers are teeming with favorable notices of her won- derful abilities, and everything English takes nowa- days, you know. Besides, a woman violinist is still something of a novelty, so we have more than one string to our bow in respect to this one artist alone,” and Colonel Starr laughed softly at the implied pun. | ‘“Then—how much—that is, do you think I could be sure of making at least fifty dollars a week if I should decide to accept?” said Mrs. Hammersley. ‘‘Fifty a week!” cried the colonel, with a rising inflection, as if to say that such a sum was not worth mentioning. ‘‘Why, just look at it for one moment in this ight. We open with a concert, say in Chick- ering Hall, at a dollar a seat. Suppose, merely sup- pose, that there are but three hundred people present —an absurdly low estimate of course, but I wish to convince you fairly. Well, that means three hundred dollars gross receipts. Igettwo hundred and twenty- five, Miss Farleigh thirty-seven and a half, yourself the same. And this for one night only, remember, and at a low basis, ridiculously low, of course, as Chickering Hall seats some 1250 persons. Four Gomicboo “S) (€@) m