FIREMAN, SAVE MY CHILD
A comic opera company was playing Moose Jaw, Canada. I don't have to say what kind of a company it was. The fact that they were playing Moose Jaw is enough.
(And by the way, who knows how that town got its name? And a bright little boy at the foot of the class held up his hand and said—"I know!" And the teacher said, "All right, Willie, you may tell us how Moose Jaw got its name." And Willie said—"It is derived from an Indian expression which means, 'The-Place-Where-the-Man-Fixed-the-Wagon-With-a-Moose's-Jaw-Bone.'")
There was no regular theater there, so the company appeared in the fire station. The engines were run out in the street and the show was given there. There were big corridors on the second and third floors where the firemen slept; there was a brass rod running down from the upper to the lower floor for the firemen to slide down in case of a fire. The firemen all slept up on the third floor this night, giving the second floor up to the ladies for a dressing room.
It was at the end of the first act. The girls were changing for the second act. The change was complete; tights and all. And an alarm was rung in. B-r-r-r-r!! went the big gong downstairs. And swish! swish! went the red-shirted firemen down the pole. The girls thought the firehouse itself was afire and ran shrieking around the room begging to be saved.
There were eighteen firemen upstairs that night and only two of them got to the fire.
On the stage of the Orpheum Theater in Montreal hangs this sign:
WHERE THERE'S SMOKE THERE'S
FIRE. YOU DO THE SMOKING AND
I'LL DO THE FIREING. MANAGER.