Weber and Fields is not to be judged by biographic standards. It is not a biography at all. It is a torrid narrative of the triumph of two Jewish boys who, unaided by education, training or influence, went from a cellar in East Broadway to their own theatre on Broadway and who furnished during ten years wholesome amusement to more people of this city and country than any two men of their time, not even excepting William Jennings Bryan and Rev. John Roach Straton. No one could reduce to writing the genius of Weber and Fields. It defies verbal characterisation but Mr. Isman makes an excellent attempt. That he does not quite succeed in conveying how side-splitting were their conversations and antics, is not his fault. But he has succeeded in giving some good pictures of the time, and some excellent likenesses of many who were associated with the two comedians: of De Wolf Hopper as Hoffman Barr; of Lillian Russell as the Wealthy Widow, and of David Warfield as the Talking Doll. No one who knew Peter Dailey will fail to approve this thumb-sketch of him:

“Oh, rare Pete Dailey! Inimitable Peter! Born comedian, the quickest-witted man that ever used grease paint; splendid voice; an acrobat and agile dancer despite his two hundred and fifty pounds; no performance ever the same; needing neither lines nor business, but only to be given the stage; convulsing his fellow actors as well as the audience with his impromptu sallies; an inveterate practical joker; a bounding, bubbling personality.”

Things have changed since the heyday of their success! When thugs want your money in New York, nowadays, they knock you down and take it; or if it is jewellery they fancy, they enter your house or shop and blackjack you if you seek to stay their quest. There was more finesse in the good old days. The man who guessed your weight—“No charge if I fail”—spoke in a code intelligible only to his accomplices. As he ran his hands over a candidate he talked, seemingly to no purpose, but his “I think your weight is,” translated, meant, “His money is in his right trousers pocket.” “I guess your weight to be” located the victim’s purse in the hip pocket, and “I say your weight is” the inside coat pocket.

If Chicago were articulate she would probably deny that she now harbours hostelries such as Joe Weber and Lew Fields were obliged to patronise.

“For the period of the Chicago stay Grenier boarded out his troupers by contract. Joe and Lew were assigned to a boarding house with the freaks. The bearded lady sat at Lew’s left and drank her coffee from a moustache cup. The fat man occupied the next three chairs on Joe’s right, and never missed the middle one when Joe removed it, as he did at every opportunity. Directly opposite, on a high chair, sat the armless wonder. What that unfortunate lacked in arms, he made up in prehensile cunning of his feet. With these he helped and fed himself, and manipulated knife, fork and spoon as matter of factly as the elephants used their trunks. The bearded lady had a reputation as a wit to uphold and it was her pleasure to shout 'Hands off!’ at least once at every meal when the wonder reached for some dish. At the first breakfast Lew asked that the biscuits be passed. They lay nearest the wonder. He thrust forth a leg with a biscuit clutched in his foot. Lew did his own reaching from then on. They ate dinner sometimes at the Palmer House, Chicago’s pride, where a jar of stick candy stood beside the catchup bottle and the vinegar cruet in the center of each table, and there were nineteen choices of meats on the seventy-five-cent table d’hôte menu that read like an inventory.”

The sun of Weber and Fields stayed in its zenith about five years. Then John Stromberg, their musical genius, died, and it set rapidly; and in the twilight, Hopper, Collier, Bernard, Mitchell and his wife, Bessie Clayton, strayed. Innocent slaughtering of the English language began to jar the ears of those who slaughtered it themselves; the quality of the Metropolis’ population changed rapidly; theatres began to spring up like mushrooms after a rain and music-halls made way for Follies. Numbered were the days of the Music Hall, which reserved the character of the Daudet heroine, and rechristened her Sapolio in token of her having consecrated her life to the task of making Paris a spotless town morally—the old Music Hall, where Dailey was Jean Gaussin, unwilling victim of Sapolio’s high moral purpose; Warfield, Uncle Cæsaire who ate moth balls to conceal his alcoholic breath; Fields, a comedy servant girl who, ordered to serve the capon en casserole, cooked it in castor oil; Joseph, Fanny Le Grand’s perfect little gentleman of a child, became in Weber’s hands, a kicking, brawling, tobacco-chewing brat; Harry Morey, now a Hollywood hero, a concierge with an Irish brogue.

And such dialogue! Foolish, oh, yes, but of such is the kingdom of real laughter.

A precious book for a melancholy mood, for an hour of convalescence, or for ten minutes of waiting while your wife makes obeisance to her mirror.

XI
STATESMEN

Woodrow Wilson, by William Allen White.
The True Story of Woodrow Wilson, by David Lawrence.
Brigham Young, by M. R. Werner.
The Life of Abraham Lincoln, by William E. Barton.
Selections from the Correspondence of Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge.
Letters from Theodore Roosevelt to Anne Roosevelt Cowles.