Perhaps a glass of clear cold water at night, after a hearty midday meal of drug--store sandwiches and pie, would work new wonders.
It seemed to be the present opinion of other waiters on the extra bench that things were never going to pick up on the Holden lot nor on any other lot.

Strongly marked types, ready to add distinction to the screen of painted shadows, freely expressed a view that the motion-picture business was on the rocks.

Unaffected by the optimists who wrote in the picture magazines, they saw no future for it.

More than one of them threatened to desert the industry and return to previous callings.

As they were likely to put it, they were going to leave the pictures flat and go back to type-writing or selling standard art-works or waiting on table or something where you could count on your little bit every week.
Under the eucalyptus tree one morning Merton Gill, making some appetizing changes in the fifth reel of Eating at Gashwiler's, was accosted by a youngish woman whom he could not at first recall.