"SHE TICKLED HIM UNDER THE CHIN."
One night a party of saintly looking grangers from Indiana,—five of them,—who appeared as if they were a delegation to some sort of a religious convention, got into a Bowery dive by some mistake, but made no mistake in remaining there. They got in early and it was late when they left. The whole thing appeared novel, startling to them. They had never before seen so much unstripped womanhood exposed to the naked eye. They hired a cheap opera-glass from the peanut boy, and they bought "pop" the whole night long. During the first part, when all the girls and the "nigger" end-men sit in a circle and sing dismal songs and deal out smutty jokes, the grangers were in a perfect ecstasy of wonder and admiration for the shortness of the women's dresses and the symmetry of their padded limbs; but when the first part was over and a serio-comic singer came tripping out upon the stage without any dress at all on—nothing but a bodice, trunks and flesh-colored tights—and sang "Tickled Him Under the Chin," they were in a frenzy and did not know what to do with their hands, or how to sit still, because the singer kept throwing glances in the direction of their box. Then came the supreme exaltation of their feelings; the serio-comic danced over to the box as she sang, and actually tickled the most clerical member of the quintette on his fat, white chin, while the four others looked on in astonishment, and the audience fairly howled.
The grangers were "guyed" pitilessly by the audience, but they paid little, if any, attention to it. As soon as the serio-comic had done her "turn" she rushed for their box, and before long the five Hoosiers were as happy as the lark when it trills its song to the morning.
M'LLE GENEVIEVE.
The "dive" audiences are mixed in their character, as has been already suggested, and the proximity of a well-dressed young man to a crowd of hoodlums in jeans pants and braided coats often precipitates a row. Scarcely a night passes in the flash variety shows that there is not some trouble. A "bouncer" is connected with each establishment, whose business it should be to quell disturbances, but who, like hot-headed Irish policemen, do more towards increasing the dimensions of a row than forty other men could do. It is bad policy to attempt open criticism of the performers or performance in one of these dens. A hiss will attract the attention of the bouncer, who will come down to the sibilant offender and say:—
"Young man, do ye expect us to give ye Sary Burnhart an' Fannie Divenpoort and Ed'in Booth fur twinty-five sints. Af ye don't loike the show lave it, but af ye open yer mug ag'in, or say so much as 'Boo,' I'll put ye fwhere ye'll have plinty toime to cool yersel' aff."
If the offender dares to argue the point the "bouncer" will catch him by the neck, and then a struggle ensues, canes are flourished, the audience rise to their feet, some of the girls run in fright from the stage, and there is pandemonium in the place for ten or fifteen minutes, by the end of which time the "bouncer" has taken his man out, and returning to business, triumphantly answers a question as to the whereabouts of the hisser:—
"Oh, I left him lyin' out there in the gutther where the collar 'll come along an' get 'im."