"Oh, say, was you at the Friars' Sunday Night in Bohemia a couple of weeks ago? The Friars spend every night in Bohemia or the Knickerbocker bar, so Wilbur says. But honest, this was a great stunt, seconded only by the Festival they are going to pull off in May.
"The curtain went up on what looked like a busy day in Childs', and Wells Hawks was in the spotlight, surrounded by a bevy of blondes and empty champagne bottles. They tell me that Gus Edwards had to blindfold Hawks to lead him up to the table where the empty bottles were, and as for the girls, it was with a great effort that they restrained themselves.
"All they could do was to look at the empty bottles, hold their noses and drink mineral water. Ain't it awful, Mabel? Anyway, everybody had a good time, so what care they for gibes and jeers? Many the time have I held a champagne cork to my nose, closed my eyes and dreamed that I was having a time. Well, to continue about our show. Wilbur says it will never go, because they only got block stands, and an agent ain't got no show without at least one kind of a litho. Wilbur said it hurt the artistic instinct of a billposter in these hick towns to put up all block stands, and you generally have to slip them a little something to be sure that they burn up all the extra stuff, so that the manager of the company wouldn't find it should he go snooping around the bill room when the show gets in town. He says if they get a good litho of a killing or a chorus they will go out of the way to stick them up just for art's sake. Wilbur is going to give me a suit case full of hard tickets to the Friar Festival, and told me to mace every John I came across on the road for as many as he would stand for. He said the more I sent in the more he would know I loved him. Wilbur is so romantic!
"This new comedian we got with the show is pretty good, but of course I can see defects. And the new prima donna is real nice. She asked me into her dressing-room the other afternoon and slipped me a little idea encourager that she had in a flask. But the way she is in love with the tenor, honest, it's sickening to me. She watches him from the time he comes in the theatre until the time he leaves, and then calls him up on the 'phone at his home.
"The other day when he asked one of the girls to tie the ribbon in his cuff she got so jealous that I thought she was going to give the poor kid a lam on the lamp. What she can see in that tenor is beyond me. What anybody can see in a tenor has got me guessing, for that matter. Wilbur says that's just the way with temperamental people, and he lost a job once just because he forgot to land pictures in the Sunday editions of all the newspapers in town of the manager's own particular guiding star, but planted a bunch of her dearest friend instead. He says there's no pleasing them, and the only way to have peace and harmony around the whole show shop is to print flashlights of the entire company. And even that looks like blazes, for the editor will always reduce an eight-column flashlight to a two-column cut, no matter how many drinks you buy him.
"He says he saw a murder once—was the only witness, in fact—and he took it on the run to a newspaper office and offered to trade a Charles Sommerville to the editor for a reading notice about the show, and the editor told him that they could get all they wanted from the police, and what they didn't get wouldn't hurt the public if they didn't know about it. He says if that wouldn't give the press agent art a kick in the neck nothing would.
"Wilbur says he loves his art and nothing pleases him better than to find a box office that will take his I O U. Us chorus have been sure working hard the past week, and Ben Teal has been just that kind and gentle, and didn't put a one of us on the pan. We certainly have got some lovely costumes; they ain't much to them, but what there is is beautiful. They smell a little of camphor, but they have been packed away in hampers ever since last season, and that accounts for it.
"I got a fine scene with the comedian and should score a great personal triumph. All of us girls are lined up for his entrance in the second act, and when he comes in he walks right over to me and says: 'Ah, little one. How are you on the Queen's wedding day,' 'Queen's wedding day,' that's my cue, and I say, 'Very well, thank you kindly, noble sire.' Aint that great? It takes nearly a whole side. I was rehearsing it in my apartment this morning with Estelle, but she was so rotten as the comedian that I took away the last $5 I gave her for a tip.
"These menials have no talent in their souls. Estelle, that's my maid, says she has no desire to elevate the drama, and she had rather be a maid for a chorus girl any time—there's more money in it. She may be right at that.
"Alla McSweeney is going to start a New Thought Church. She says that she has a whole flock of new thoughts and it would be quite fashionable to start this new think stunt. She said she would tell us her new thoughts if she thought we would never breathe a word to a living breathing soul. Gee, that lets our gang out.