“It was half-past one when we reached the course, and one of the officious red-jackets who haunt the Hill stepped forward and gave me the customary brush down. I strolled a few paces onward, when another red-jacket pounced down on me, and, notwithstanding my expostulations, brushed me down again, hissing meanwhile as though he were grooming a horse. I essayed to light a cigar, when a third brush-fiend was upon me; but when a fourth made his appearance, brandishing his implement of torture, the dams of my long pent-up temper broke down, and a torrent of adjectives, the reverse of complimentary, flowed over the fourth brush-demon. My wrath was at its height when I found myself quickly tapped on the shoulder, and beheld the maliciously chuckling countenance of Sothern. ‘I will trouble you for one guinea,’ he said, and proceeded to explode with laughter. Of course he had followed me about, and feed the brush-fiends to harry me to desperation.”
W. J. Florence, a well-known American comedian in his day, was very much on a par with Sothern in the matter of practical joking, and the story of a good-natured trick he played on the latter, as related by himself in one of his posthumous papers, is very entertaining. “Meeting Sothern on Broadway one fine morning,” so the story goes, “I told him that there was an oat for him at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, taking care to pronounce my words in such a careless, inarticulate way that the genial comedian thought I said there was a note for him at the hostelry I had named. He accordingly started off post-haste up town—we had met near the battery, whither we both had strolled for a morning constitutional—to get his oat. When he reached the Fifth Avenue Hotel and the clerk, in response to his inquiry, handed him out the grain of oats which I had left for him, he saw the joke immediately, and laughed at it most heartily, devoting the remainder of the day to telling everybody he met what a capital joke Florence had played on him.”
“With a neck like that, what a fine thing it must be to be thirsty!”
Experienced Young Fellow. Ah, Clara, you should have seen the Pantomimes that I’ve seen; these modern affairs ain’t half so good.
The late Fred Leslie was another popular comic actor who, like Sothern and Toole and so many of “the profession” past and present, was never so happy as when planning some harmless practical joke, which was always sure to amuse every one concerned. One of his most successful efforts in this direction was made during his tour in America with the Gaiety Company, and is related by the late Clement Scott in his recollections of this celebrated comedian.
TWO TRANSFORMATION SCENES.