HARRY BARNES, OLD ACTOR
Barnes was incongruously named when he was given the name of Harry. It is a flippant name. It calls up merriness, youth, bravado, color, song. Barnes was forty-nine, streaked with grey, heart-sick, pallid, shuffling, timorous, sorry, and forlorn. Three decades of grease paint had made his skin flabby; and three decades of what the grease paint stood for had done likewise by his soul. It was thus that he drifted from doorway to doorway in Fourteenth Street, down by the Elevated, where dry little agents told him in dry little voices that there was nothing for him from day to day. It was thus that he dragged his feet up the boarding-house stairs to his skylight room, night after night, carrying the two heartless fardels, Hope and Memory.
It was approaching a certain holiday, a holiday which came on Sunday.
"Harry," said old Tony Sanderson, after he had finished informing the actor that there was no news for him, "why don't you do a little press-agent work for yourself? Get your name in the paper. That might help you get something to do."
The other listened despondently.
"Now here's a chance," went on the agent, in a confidential tone. "No money in it, of course, but, as I said, there's a chance to get into print. Some sort of a newsboys' benefit bunch is going to get together Sunday night and give a little entertainment fer the kids up in Beals' gymnasium on the Bowery. They're callin' for volunteers among the actors. You take your monologue stunt down there and get onto the program. The newspapers always plays up this newsboy dope strong and you'll get a good mention sure. Clip the notices and then you've got somethin' to flash. See?"
Barnes stood uneasily by the desk. "I—I don't know, Tony," he answered. "To tell yuh the truth, I'd be a little bit scared to try it. Yuh see, I—well, if you wasn't an old friend of mine, I couldn't say it—but, confidentially, Tony, I—I've kind o' lost my grip. I'm a—a back number, Tony. I'm afraid o' them kids; they're too wise. My old act wouldn't go." He waited, awkwardly; then, as if he hoped he were wrong, he asked: "Would it?"
Sanderson snapped his grim eyes. "What're yuh tryin' to put it on fer, at all, then—if yuh think it won't take with a gang of kids at a free doin's?" Then his tone softened. "Look here, Harry. It'll only be ten or twenty minutes. Go ahead. You'll get through all right. You ain't as much of a dead one as you think you are."
Barnes straightened up. It was all right for him to make a slight confession, but Sanderson had wounded his professional vanity. "A dead one!" he exclaimed. "Certainly not. Harry Barnes a dead one! After a thirty years' career in the companies of the best——"
The agent shoved a card in his hand and cut him off short. "Go around there and tell 'em to put you down for a monologue." And Harry went, with dignity and misgivings.
His misgivings were all the more increased when he saw the list of promised performers: La Belle Marie, the famous little toe dancer in her attractive transformations; the Brothers Zincatello, Risley experts at the Hippodrome; Julian Jokes, "in his inimitable Hebrew monologue"; the Seven Sebastians, the world's most marvelous Herculean acrobatic performers; Mlle. Joujou, the popular singing comedienne, Prima Donna and Star, direct from her unusual and most distinguished triumph at the Palace Theater, London; and a dozen more of the younger and more popular people of the stage, all adorned, with adjectives and hyperbole. Down at the bottom of the list with a trembling pencil he wrote: "Harry Barnes, Singing and Talking." Then he shook hands with the secretary of the organization and walked back to his boarding-house in a mild fever of excitement.
In his room he went eagerly about his work. He rehearsed again and again his meager little bag of tricks, his funny Irishman, his Chinaman—no, the Chinaman came first, because he used the queue afterward to wrap around his chin and simulate Irish "galloways"—his Dutch comedian monologue about married life, his old-time songs and dances. He furbished up some old "patter" and injected new anecdotes. And this he kept up morning and evening until the notable Sunday came.
