Secure Your Seats Early.
By special request of a number of distinguished visitors the
performance will not begin until 8:30.
Carriages may be ordered for any hour.
Box sheet ready at noon Saturday, corner of Vanderbilt
and Astor Avenues.
When Handy read the programme to his company they were so astonished they scarcely knew what to say. At first they appeared to regard it as a joke. Handy's manner betokened earnestness. His companions thought it best to withhold their curiosity and await further developments. Their manager they knew to be a man of action—a species of Oscar Hammerstein in embryo, with a blending of Wilkins Micawber and Mulberry Sellers mixed in.
The company employed the afternoon in folding circulars and programmes. Handy himself was deep in the study of the élite directory, and under his direction a large number of envelopes were carefully addressed. The work went on systematically. Night at last arrived, and all hands enjoyed a respite from clerical labor. At nine o'clock the company went ashore, carrying with them their tent, costumes and properties—such as they were. It was a busy night on land, and their strenuous exertions, under the cover of darkness, accomplished wonders under Handy's guidance. It was next door to daylight when they got back to the ship to take a rest before the arduous work of the eventful day began.
Before noon the canvas showhouse on the corner was the principal subject of conversation throughout the town. During the night the strollers had set up their tent, and there was scarcely a house in town in which they had not placed handbills and circulars announcing the coming performance. No matter where an inhabitant wandered one of the "Humpty Dumpty" programmes was sure to be found. The people at first glance regarded the announcement with some degree of doubt, but the appearance of the tent, with the flags flying, dispelled that fear. The tent seemed to have got there by magic. Like the palace of Aladdin, it had sprung into existence during the night. Its appearance excited curiosity and provoked gossip, and the announcement of "Humpty Dumpty" was a puzzle. With the most unparalleled nerve messenger boys were dispatched to the fashionable cottages with circulars soliciting patronage and inviting attendance, and a considerable number of the cottagers, attracted by the novelty of the undertaking, concluded it would be a good joke to go to see the extraordinary show.
"We'll paralyze 'em," said Handy to his fellow-players, as they were grouped together on the stage preparing red lights, which he proposed to use as a species of illumination. "Wait until I let the band loose in the streets, and if it don't fetch 'em, well, I'll quit the business."
"Handy, methinks we made a bloomin' blunder," remarked the Little 'Un. "We ought to have billed the town for a week."
"A week?" queried the property man in some surprise. "Why so, may I ask, my noble critic?"