The American Claimant


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"Why, how could that give her a reputation as an actress?"  
"It didn't--it only made her name familiar. People want to see her play  
because her name is familiar, but they don't know what made it familiar,  
because they don't remember. First, she was at the bottom of the  
ladder, and absolutely obscure wages thirteen dollars a week and find her  
own pads."  
"Pads?"  
"
Yes--things to fat up her spindles with so as to be plump and attractive.  
Well, she got burnt out in a hotel and lost $30,000 worth of diamonds."  
"She? Where'd she get them?"  
"
Goodness knows--given to her, no doubt, by spoony young flats and sappy  
old bald-heads in the front row. All the papers were full of it. She  
struck for higher pay and got it. Well, she got burnt out again and lost  
all her diamonds, and it gave her such a lift that she went starring."  
"
Well, if hotel fires are all she's got to depend on to keep up her name,  
it's a pretty precarious kind of a reputation I should think."  
"Not with her. No, anything but that. Because she's so lucky; born  
lucky, I reckon. Every time there's a hotel fire she's in it. She's  
always there--and if she can't be there herself, her diamonds are. Now  
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