“Well, all right,” she said. “Come on and get in.”
With much straining of his thin, stiff legs he got up and as he did so I noticed that his coat and trousers were home-made—cut, oh! most amazingly—and out of some old, faded wine colored cloth to begin with, probably worn years before by someone else. It made me think of all the old people I had known in my time, scrimping along on little or nothing, and of the thousands and thousands perhaps in every land for whom life is so hard, so meagre! If an artist takes a special case in hand and depicts it, one weeps, but no scheme has been devised to relieve the intense pressure on the many; and we forget so easily. I most of all. If I were a god, I have often said to myself, I would try to leaven the whole thing a little more evenly—but would I? Perhaps if I were a god I would see a reason for things as they are—a strangeness, a beauty, a requital not present to these mortal eyes.
These streets of North Manchester were hung with those same triangular banners—red, white, blue, green, pink, orange—which we had seen in the East and which announced the imminence of a local Chautauqua. I do not know much about that organization, but it certainly knows how to advertise in country towns. In the store windows were quite striking pictures of Stromboli, the celebrated band leader, a chrysanthemum haired, thin bodied Italian in a braided white suit, who had been photographed crouching, as though he were about to spring, and with one thin hand raised high in the air holding a bâton. His appearance was that of one who was saying: “One more crash now and I have won all.” And adjoining him in every window was the picture of Madame Adelina Scherzo, the celebrated soprano prima donna “straight from the Metropolitan Opera House, New York,” who was shown photographed with manager and friends on the observation platform of her private car. Madame Scherzo was in black velvet, with bare arms, shoulders and throat, an entrancing sight. She was rather pretty too, and a line under the picture made it clear that she was costing the management "$800.00 a day," a charge which interested me, considering the size of the town and county and the probable audiences which could be got out to see anything.
“How large is the hall where the Chautauqua entertainments are held?” I asked of the local bookstore man where I was buying some picturecards.
“It isn’t a hall; it’s a tent,” he replied. “They bring their own tent.”
“Well, how many will it seat or hold?”
“Oh, about fifteen hundred people.”
“And how many can they count on at any given performance?”
“Oh, about a thousand.”
“Not more than that?” I queried.