Then there would be a picture of President McKinley and one of Abe Lincoln and Grover Cleveland—one of an emigrant wagon going across the Western plains to California, with Indians on ponies circling in the middle distance—a picture of the driving of the last railroad spike, when the railroad builders coming from the West had met the railroad builders coming from the East—somewhere out on the plains. The spike would be a golden one, as everyone in the audience would know, but in the picture it would be black. Several men with silk hats on their heads stood about while a workman drove the spike. The hammer was upraised. It stayed there. In the background was an engine, and several Indians wrapped in blankets and looking sad, as though to say: “This cooks our bacon.”
Most of the pictures would be in dead blacks and whites, but there would be, at the very end, in colors, the old flag floating—that last of all. It was as good for a hand then as it was later when George Cohan got rich and became famous with it, and father and Aldrich evidently knew it would “go.”
The admission charge would be ten cents.
As I have said, Aldrich was a red-faced mild middle-aged appearing man. What things will not such quiet-looking fellows sometimes do? No one in the world would ever be understood at all if your mild quiet-looking man did not have, buried away in him somewhere, the possibility of being almost any known sort of a fool.
In the arrangement that had been made father was to be the actor—a comedian. He was to sing certain songs.
First, a few pictures from the magic lantern; then a song by father, with a little dance. Then more pictures and another song; and at last the colored pictures, ending with the flag flying. The inference might be that the flag, at any rate, had survived the ordeal.
And a dream of a harvest of dimes too. As for expense—well, let us say, a dollar for the use of the country schoolhouse and enough firewood to heat it for the evening. A boy would build the fire for the chance to be admitted free; and the horse and the two men would be fed at the bounty of some farmer. Father would have promised that—he would have been very sure of being able to accomplish that—would have depended upon his personal charm. I can fancy him explaining to Aldrich, or rather not explaining. He would smile and throw out his hands in a peculiar way. “You leave that to me, just you leave that to me.”
And his hopes would not be unjustified either. What a boon for a quiet, dull, farming family in the winter, to have such a one light down upon it! He and his companion would have to stay in the one school district for two or three days. Arrangements would have to be made about getting the schoolhouse, and he and Aldrich would have to drive around the neighborhood and distribute the play bills:
AT THE SCHOOLHOUSE
FRIDAY EVENING
MAJOR IRWIN ANDERSON
THE ACTOR
IN SONG AND DANCE
MARVELOUS MAGIC-LANTERN SHOW
A VISIT TO ALL THE WONDERS
OF THE WORLD
10 CENTS
And then the evenings in the farmhouses! Aldrich would sit like an Indian in his corner by the farmhouse stove; and he must have been saying to himself constantly: “Now, how did I get into this? How did I get into this?”