Continuous Vaudeville — A Closer Reading

Tompkins looked at his watch; it was ten minutes of twelve. "Well, Con," he said, "when you go out to dinner, you stay out; don't come back until to-morrow morning. Then come and tell me what you did."

Con put on his coat and went out; out to the first vacation he had had in sixteen years; the first opportunity to see what this city he lived in looked like. The first chance he had had in sixteen years to get out into the country; to hear the birds sing; to see the green fields; the trees; the flowers growing.

And what do you suppose he did?

He walked across the narrow alley and visited with the Stage Door Tender of the Tremont Theater all the afternoon.

I asked the Stage Door Tender of Proctor's Twenty-third Street Theater in New York once what he considered the best act that ever played the house; unhesitatingly he replied,

"Joe Maxwell's Police Station act."

I asked him why he considered that the best.

"Ain't no women in it."

An agent for some fangled kind of typewriter was trying to interest the Stage Door Tender of Keith's Theater in Philadelphia in the machine:

"Now this is just what a man in your position wants and needs. You have a lot of writing to do here, and nowhere to do it; now with this machine you don't require any table or desk; you can hold this typewriter right in your lap."

"Not me, Mister," said the Door Man hastily; "I'm married."

There used to be a door man at Keith's Boston House who could tell more in less words than any man I ever saw. One Monday morning some actors came in who had never been in Boston before, and they were asking this old fellow about the different hotels:

"How is the Rexford?" asked the Lady.

"Burlesque," grunted the old fellow.

"What is the Touraine?"

"How about the So-and-so House?" naming quite a notorious hotel.

"Been open eleven years and had three trunks."

"Where have I seen you before?" And the Judge at the prisoner leers; "Why, I taught your daughter singing." "You did?" said the Judge; "_ten years_."

Nat Haines was playing Keith's, Providence, R. I. The act on ahead of Nat was Professor Woodward's Trained Seals. One afternoon Nat, hearing a noise, looked around and there was one of the seals coming out under the curtain behind him. It took Nat just two jumps to get off the stage. An attendant came out and captured the seal. Nat came back. "Well," he said, scratching his head; "I have followed every animal on earth but a skunk and a lizard, and now I have got that. Humph; Professor Woodward's Trained Shad. I think I will learn dressmaking."

I once asked Ezra Kendal how he ever kept track of those seven children of his.

"I use the card-index system," he replied solemnly.

The Depths of Degradation: A man that plays second violin and double alto in the band.

Mary Richfield (Ryan & Richfield) had a headache; the Los Angeles sun had been too much for her. She went in to a drug store and asked the clerk for a headache powder. This clerk was not a first-class drugger; he was just a student; but he knew where the headache powders were, so he got one for her; got his ten cents and started away. Mary looked around; there was no soda fountain, no water tank.

"Well, here," she said; the young man stopped and looked back at her. "Where am I supposed to take this powder?"

"In your mouth, Mam."

One cold, blustery day several of us were sitting in the stage door tender's little room at the Orpheum, Denver, when the door was thrown open and in hurried a boy of fifteen or sixteen.

"Where's Cressy?" he asked briskly.

"Right here," I answered in the same manner.

"What do you charge?"

"Five hundred dollars."

And he was out the door and gone.

At the Minneapolis Orpheum a chap with a jag came weaving his way out from the auditorium and over to the box-office window.

"Shay," he said thickly; "wha' do you want to hire such bad acters for? They're rotten."

The ticket seller asked which ones he objected to.

"Why, tha' ol' Rube, and that gal in there; they're rotten."

"What are you talking about?" said the ticket seller; "that is Cressy and Dayne; they are the Headliners; they are fine."

The man looked at him a moment, as if to see if he really meant it; then he asked earnestly,

For another moment he studied, then as he turned away, he shook his head sadly and said,

"I shall never go to another vaudeville show as long as I live."