"Was I? What! Well, I should smile! You know me. Say, you may talk of the realistic drama of these degenerate days—why, they aren't one, two, nine with the shows of days gone by. Oh, you may laugh about stage realism and chin about real race-horses in racing scenes, and real society women to play real ladies, real burglars to crack unreal property safes, and real prize-fighters to do their prize-fighting fakes, in addition to attempting to act, but let me tell you fellows that the managers who are gone never missed a trick when they had to do a realistic stunt."
"Well, you ought to know, Smith," said Handy.
"Why, hang it, man alive! they did everything in the show business as good then as they do now; and what's more, they didn't have to import actors from abroad nor send over to the other side for stage managers to teach the company how to act. Was I in the old Bowery in them days? Was I? Sure, Mike! I went in there as a call-boy. Let me see—when? Oh, yes, I remember. It was the season that 'The Cataract of the Ganges' was brought out. Yes, sir, and they gave the 'Cataract' with real water, too, and make no bloomin' error about it either!"
"Oh, come, come there, old man! Draw it mild. Don't pile it on too thick," interposed the doubting Thomas of the party and the most juvenile member of the troupe. "We can't stand all that. We are willing to swallow the whisky in the green-room, but water on the stage—oh, no! that's a little too much of a good thing. Why, my gentle romancer, the Croton water pipes weren't laid in the city in them days. Then how the mischief could they give the waterfall scene? With buckets, tubs, or with a pump—which? or with all three combined?"
For a moment the speaker was nonplussed for an answer. He felt embarrassed, and looked so. He was about to make reply when another of the company who, by the way, was an old-timer like himself, boldly came to the rescue.
"He's right," boldly asserted the new contributor to the conversation, "dead right. I remember the stunt myself."
It may be as well to state that Smith's veracity about theatrical things in general was not what it should be. His stories never could keep companionship with truth. He had so ingenious a manner of prevarication that he actually believed his own tales. If what Smith at odd times, when he happened to be in the vein, related of himself was true, then he might be credited with having acted in nearly every city this side of the Rockies and have supported all the great stars. He was closely approaching his fiftieth year, yet he maintained he had participated in the principal theatrical productions of a generation previous, with the most reckless disregard of probabilities. He seemed to have no appreciable estimate of time or place when relating his marvelous experiences.
"Yes, sirree," said Smith, "I can call the turn on that trick. Why, the thing is as fresh in my mind as if it only happened last night. Maybe you don't believe me. Well, every man is entitled to his own belief, but let me explain how I remember it so well."
"Fire away! We're all attention."
"Well, it happened in this way. I was engaged in the old National Theatre in Chatham Street at the time when the 'Cataract' was brought out, and it made old man Purdy, the manager, so hoppin' mad to think that his Bowery rival should get the bulge on him with a scene like the waterfall that he determined to see Hamblin and go him one better. Now what do you think he did?"