The manager of the concert company looked like a Methodist minister going to see the bishop. He wore a high silk hat and a last-winter’s double-breasted coat. Whenever he talked he held the hat in one hand and rubbed it with the other so that it looked like a clipped yearling at a country run off. His voice was a deep bass, and when he did the “remember good people the Big Show is not yet ’arf over” from the elevated stage you could gamble on the words hitting every ear.
He was sitting on the ring bank looking over his touch list when the conversation grew wavy and then dropped to a hush.
“This here tent business is pullin’ down to a theatrical man,” he said as he lighted a choked stogie. “Give me the hall show every time for the cush and comfort an’ I’ll be easy an’ shippin’ in money to the backer if the bookin’s is good. The rep shows is the thing me boys if you can deliver, an’ you can strike territory that ain’t been ploughed to death by a lot of yellows.
“Had out a rep company that was a winner. We was playin’ ‘East Lynne’ and doin’ it good with six people and a band on the balcony at 7 to 8. The way we threw them dramatic chunks into the ten, twenty and thirts was sumthin’ remark’ble. We wasn’t connin’ neither, but givin’ ’em a show that had ’em weepin’ from ring up to las’ curt’n. Say, I had a leadin’ lady that was the genuine. She had been up three times before the school commissioners for declaimin’ an’ her old man thought she was a Mary Anderson. We joshed him along on the Mary Anderson gag an’ the old guy checked in with a five hundred for a starter to get the fit up and the gal’s costumes. Say, she was a blonde with a figure that set the town hall tonight people on the road to ruin with all brakes off. The leadin’ man was a cuff juggler and he wouldn’t settle down, but he doubled in props an’ was all right. The heavy was one of those chesty boys who was alles givin’ me the jab ‘when I was with Booth.’ He started out all right, all right in the first act, but he died out before the curt’n got down; the old man was pretty rotten, thank you, but the way he could play an E flat cornet on the balcony was sumthin’ strictly proper. I’m jes’ tellin’ youse what you can do with a lot of bum players, if you’ve got the goods, an’ youse gets the bookin’s. I was workin’ the crowd on a $300 salary an’ playin’ up into the gross on $750 a week an’ livin’ like the man what owns his lay out. But I let go.
“You see some of the managers down on the coal oil circuit in Central Pennsylvania got the vaudeville bug and was yellin’ for specialties. So I gets the soubrette to do a rag time stunt between the second an’ third, an’ the first night the gal’ry window jumps nine and a half to the good. I says that’s what they wants an’ I keeps the specialty in for good. But the Lady Isabel of the push was getting artistic an’ she says no to the specialty. I says yes, an’ her old man comes on an’ says Mary Anderson didn’t have no gal singin’ and showin’ her legs in her show, so me an’ the old guy plays quits. Well, it was gettin’ warm, so I picks up me little soubrette, gets a privilege at a fair an’ starts in to do the black tent. We had a little round top, blacker on the inside than a Bow’ry alley. The game was to get the yaps inside, all lights out, flash the calcium, an’ then do the floatin’ illusion. The little gal would float roun’ the tent an’ hand me out roses, and the gang would go daffy. You see she was rigged up in one of these white gowns an’ was chasin’ round in a back flap stickin’ her head and body through wherever I had a slit. But I has a good lime light man an’ the payin’s never coupled to the con.
“It was good for thirty a day and the privilege was cheap, but say, the finish was tragic. You see the gal had run off from home, where she was makin’ three dollars spinnin’ yarn in a mill an’ payin’ her people two fifty board. She gets stuck on the show business an’ goes out with a rep, where I picks her up. Well, it seems that her old man gets sort o’ dippy ’cause he didn’ do the right thing by the little one an’ started out to fin’ her. Somebody tells the old boy she is dead an’ he falls down for a while. But he gets up and goes wanderin’ ’bout to all the shows lookin’ for the gal. Well, he gets into my show one day an’ when we flashes the illusion there’s a yell an’ the old one says, ‘me daughter, me daughter,’ and the gal flops an’ breaks up the show. She gets sorry an’ goes home with the gray hair an’ I loses the graft and strikes this.”
The Boss Canvasman started in to do a little cussin’ because the round top over the stage was sagging and he broke up the talk.
But the Press Agent wants the finish of the yarn, and he speaks up:
“Well, Pop, what became of the gal?”
“Oh,” says Pop, “the old man goes under the ground an’ the jig stepper goes back to the business. Last season she was doublin’ with the iron chested man doin’ a singin’ specialty in the side show. But they’s both out now. The iron chested man is yellin’ the stations on the Ninth Avenue L, and the Mamie girl is makin’ ten a week posin’ for chromos that you wouldn’t hang over the thermometer, s’ help me.”