"Stuff and nonsense! You make me slightly weary," replied the landlord. "Suppose it don't—what then? If the printing don't suit the play or the entertainment, what's the matter with the entertainment being made to fit in and suit the printing? Don't they all do it? What do you think printers and lithographers butt in and become theatrical managers for? For the sake and love of art, eh? Rot! You know as well as I do that this pictorial work you see stuck up all around hardly ever represents the thing they give on the stage and to see which the theatre-going public puts up its good coin to enjoy. Why, bless my soul, Mr. Handy, there's hardly a show on the road to-day that don't lay its managers liable to arraignment for obtaining money under false pretenses by the brilliancy of the printing and the stupidity and poverty of the performance."
"You talk like a reformer!"
"Reformers be hanged! I was about to tell you that some time ago there was a movement on foot in one or two of the Western States to secure the passage of a legal measure compelling showmen to actually present on the stage what their pictorial work on the dead walls and billboards promised. If the shows now going the rounds were half as good as their printing, they'd be works of art."
"Say, boss!" remarked Handy admiringly, "you have the real Simon pure theatrical managerial instinct in you, you have. You haven't always been in the hotel business?"
"Nix, I had at one time the candy privilege with a circus, and I had to keep my eyes open, I tell you."
"Shake, old man," as Handy extended his hand. "When you began talking printing I knew you were on to the racket and understood something about the theatrical biz. Why, you're one of us. You belong to the profesh."
"Oh, give us a rest with your nonsense! What are you chinning about? I am just a plain, common, every-day innkeeper."
"Suppose you are. Let it go at that, and let me tell you times are advancing. We live in a great age—a progressive and changeable age. There was a time when theatres and theatrical companies were managed or directed by men who were actors, or had been actors, or by men who had a love for the business, and had some particular talent or fitness for the trade; but nowadays all that is changed, and all sorts of chaps have butted in for the sake of what's in it for them. It is not, let me tell you, an unusual thing to find the druggist of yesterday, or the commercial drummer, or newspaper man of the week previous, become the impresario of an opera troupe or the manager of a playhouse the following week. This is a most changeable as well as progressive and strenuous age."
"You speak like a philosopher, Mr. Handy."
"Do they tell the truth?"