Bethel Merriday

On her sixth birthday Bethel's mother caught her imitating the slouching, slow walk of an old woman and rebuked her for generally showing off, speaking up in Church and in this case for copying people. Bethel said, "Oh! I'm not copying her. I'm trying to be her. I can be a lot of different people." Sinclair Lewis's novel about the theater woos the senses with the smell of shabby costumes, cramped dressing rooms, and what makes actors and actresses do what they do, for what is often very little money.