“I think she is immense,” finished the wag, utterly unruffled, while his friends, who had failed to recognize their fellow passenger, stood with jaws dropped at the spectacle of the strange woman butting into their conversation.
As for Miss Morewin, she smiled, flushed a little, and when the car reached the street level, she hastily mingled with the throng and was lost to sight.
THE MODEST CHORUS MAN.
Owners of Bass and Tenor Voices are Regarded As Necessary Evils by the Producers of Musical Comedies.
We hear much of the chorus girl, but very little of the chorus man, who is no doubt considered by the manager a necessary evil, inasmuch as girls are not endowed, outside of dime museums at least, with bass and tenor voices. I know one of the four chorus men who made an oasis of deep tones in the blossoming garden of Weber & Fields’s girls, but he soon was promoted from the ranks to a principal part and is now reaping profits as a writer of comic songs.
He went into the business because he wanted to go on the stage, and found this the easiest door to it. Why do other chorus men take up the thing, I asked myself, and to find out, I proceeded to get acquainted with two young fellows in the George M. Cohan company, where chorus work is a very important feature of the proceedings.
“Why did you take up this line?” I asked outright of one fellow, a big-boned chap who was formerly a cigarmaker in Chicago.
“Because I wanted to see the world,” he replied. “That’s the reason I prefer one-night stands to long runs.”
“But you must run up against some hard ones in the way of dressing-rooms among the small towns of the country,” I reminded him. And then I told of some “Florodora” girls I had heard about who were each assigned a chair on which to make their half-dozen or more changes of costume.
“Oh, exclaimed the former cigar-man, that’s nothing. I’ve had to dress on the turn of a stairs, where the bend made an extra wide step.”