Frank Merriwell's New Comedian; Or, the Rise of a Star — Burt L. Standish

It is not a pleasant experience to wake up on a beautiful morning to the realization that one has failed. There seems a relentless irony in nature herself that the day that dawns on a night when our glittering hopes have become dead, dull ashes of despair and ruin should be bright and warm with the sun's genial rays. So Frank Merriwell felt this fine morning in Puelbo, Colorado. The night before, with high hopes, he had produced his new play, "For Old Eli." He recalled the events of that first production with almost a shudder. "For Old Eli" had been a failure, a flat, appalling, stupefying failure. From the rise of the curtain everything and everybody had gone wrong; lines were forgotten, Ephraim Gallup had had stage fright, his own best situations had been marred. How much of this was due to the lying handbills which had been scattered broadcast, asserting that he was not the real Frank Merriwell, but an impostor, a deadbeat and a thorough scoundrel, Frank could not tell. He believed that these efforts to ruin him had little effect, for when, at the close of the performance, he had made a speech from the stage, assuring the audience that he would bring his play back and give a satisfactory performance, his reception had been cordial.