Continuous Vaudeville by Will M. Cressy (best thriller novels to read txt) 📖
- Author: Will M. Cressy
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"What's the reason you won't be here?" asked Max.
"I play for a dance over to Masonic Hall."
"So do I," said the bass fiddler.
"We all do, but the drummer," said the flute player.
"You do? Then what the devil have you kept me here rehearsing you for three hours for?" demanded Max.
"Well," said the cornet player, "we knew this was a big show, and we presumed you would be a good director, and we thought the practice would do us good."
"It will," said Max.
On another occasion he struggled all the afternoon with a "Glee Club and Mandolin Serenaders'" orchestra. Finally, by cutting out all solos, playing all the accompaniments himself, and con[50]fining the "Glee Club" to "um-pahs," he got everything figured out except the cornet player; he was beyond pardon; so Max said to him,
"I am awful sorry, old man, but you won't do; so you just sit and watch the show to-night."
"Oh," said the Not-Jule-Levy, "then I don't play, eh?"
"You do not play," said Max.
"All right then; then there'll be no show."
"Why won't there be a show?" asked Max.
"Because I am the Mayor, and I will revoke your license."
He played.
At some Southern town we played once with "The Old Homestead"; the rehearsal was called for 4:30. At 4:30 all the musicians were there but the bass fiddler.
"Where is your bass fiddler?" asked our director.
"Well, he can't get here just yet," replied one of the other players.
"When will he be here?"
"Well, if it rains he is liable to be in any minute now; if it don't rain he can't get here until six o'clock."
[51]"What has the rain got to do with it?"
"He drives the sprinkling cart."
The worst orchestra I ever heard was with an Uncle Tom's Cabin show playing East St. Louis. It consisted of two pieces; a clarinet and a bass fiddle, each worse than the other.
At North Goram, Maine, I once hired an entire brass band of twenty-two pieces to play for an entire evening of roller skating in the town hall, for three dollars. They were worth every dollar of it.
In one of my plays I issue a newspaper called The Wyoming Whoop. At the top of the first column are the words—"In Hoc Signo Vinces." One day one of the stage hands came to me with a copy of the paper in his hands, and pointing to this line, said,
"That means 'We Shoot to Kill,' don't it?"
My wife was in a hair-dressing parlor in Cleveland; the girl who was doing what ever she was doing to her, discovered that she was the Miss Dayne at Keith's Theater.
[52]"Oh, say," she said, "I wish you would tell me something."
"Yes? what is it?" asked Miss D.
"Is that old man that plays on the stage with you as homely as he looks? His face is just like one of those soft rubber faces that the men sell on the street; the ones you pinch up into all sorts of shapes. He doesn't look as bad as that all the time, does he?"
Miss D. told her that there was not much choice.
Jim Thornton was playing his first engagement for Kohl & Castle in Chicago. As he came off from his first show, he stopped in the wings to watch the next act. A gentleman came along, touched him on the shoulder and said,
"You are not allowed to stand in the wings here."
Jim looked at him a moment, then said,
"And who are you?"
"Who am I? I am Kohl."
"You belong in the cellar," and Jim turned back to watch the show.
William Cahill was playing Paterson, N. J., and living at his home at the furthermost end of[53] Brooklyn. Three hours and a half each way, twice a day. A friend meeting him on the ferry said,
"You are playing Paterson this week, aren't you, Bill?"
"A little," replied Bill, "but I am going and coming most of the time."
I met Fred Niblo on Broadway:
"Hello, Fred," I said; "I went by your house this morning, and—"
"Thank you, Bill," he said, grasping my hand and shaking it heartily.
Clifford & Burke were playing Shea's, Buffalo. There was also a bare-back riding act on the bill. There is a very old lady who comes around the theater every night selling laundry bags, money bags and such stuff to the actors. She had seen Clifford & Burke's act several times and knew that they finished up their act with a dance.
Friday night she was sitting in our dressing room; Clifford and Burke were on the stage when she came in but had finished their act and gone to their room, although the old lady didn't know this. The horse act was on and the old horse[54] galloping around the stage "clickerty clack; clickerty clack; clickerty clack," when suddenly the old lady stops talking, pricks up her ears, listens a minute, then said,
"By garry, thim byes is doin' a long dance this night."
There was a German artist playing on the bill with us in Buffalo. He was a very polite chap, but his English was very Berlin. One night, after holding a rehearsal with a German acrobat, who was not much better off than he was as to the English language, he came over to my wife, and very slowly and laboriously he said,
"Goot evening, Madam Mees Dayne; eet iss colder than h——, don't it?"
Charlie Case was telling me how bad his teeth were:
"Why, Will," he said, "I have indigestion something awful. I can't chew a piece of meat to save my life. I just bite it hard enough to make sure it is dead, and swallow it."
Chick Sale comes from some one-night stand up in Illinois, I have forgotten the name of it;[55] but there are two rival hose companies in the town. As fires are scarce, every once in a while they have a "contest." The two companies line up side by side, somebody counts three and away they go across the square to the watering trough. Upon arriving there they unreel their hose, stick one end into the watering trough, man the pumps, and the first one to get a stream on to the flag pole wins.
Last summer there came a real fire. As the fire was nearest to their engine house the Alerts got there, and got a stream on to the fire before the Reliables arrived. As they came panting and puffing up the hill the captain of the Reliables saw this, stopped, waved his hand back at his company and said,
"They have beat us, boys; you can go back."
There is one good thing about Des Moines, according to the advertisements they are running in the magazines. There are twenty railroads running out of it.
On 125th Street in New York City there is a piano dealer by the name of Wise. On every window of his store he has painted[56]—
"What is home without a piano? Wise."
And he is correct.
One week in Omaha, Neb., the advertising in front of the Gaiety Theater read—
"The Midnight Maidens.
15 to 75 cts."
A Montreal furrier advertises—
"Fur cap, $1.00.
Good Fur Cap, $1.25.
Real Fur Cap, $1.50."
[57]
"HEART INTEREST"When you go into a Continuous Vaudeville show you expect to see all sorts of acrobatic marvels, trained animals, and funny people. You expect to hear sweet singers, talented musicians, and funny comedians. But once in awhile you see and hear some little gem of sincere, heart interest.
And so, just in order to give that little touch of the "heart interest," I am going to tell you of a couple of little incidents that came into our lives at different times.
One night several years ago we were playing in a little town way up in the mountains of Pennsylvania. The night telegraph operator at the railroad station was an old schoolmate of mine. And so after the show was over I went over to the station to have a visit with him. It was a still cold night in the middle of winter and we sat around the little stove in his office, talking over our boyhood days back in New Hampshire.
[58]Along about midnight the outer door opened and a poor, ragged, hungry-looking young chap of twenty-two or three stepped in and walked to the stove. After he had got his hands thawed out a little he came over to the window of the telegraph office and handed the operator a piece of paper. It was just a piece of common wrapping paper with a message written on it in lead pencil.
"How much will it cost me to send that message?" he asked.
The operator counted the words.
"Ten words; twenty-five cents."
The young fellow withdrew his closed hand from his pocket and emptied out exactly twenty-five cents in pennies and nickels, sighed and went out.
The operator sat down and sent the message. Then he sat looking at the paper for quite a few seconds; then he turned to me and said,
"Well, I have been jerking lightning quite a while now, but there is the biggest ten words I ever sent."
He handed me the message; it read—
"Kiss Mother good-by; I am too poor to come."
[59]The second is just a letter which Miss Dayne received in Pittsburg, from a poor old mother who thought she recognized in Miss Dayne her erring daughter.
McKeesport, Pa., Mar. 5.
Dear Daughter Blanch.
i recognized your picture in one of the Pittsburg papers. Blanchie will you write me a few lines and releived my heart and mind. if it is concealment you dont want any one to know from me if you will only write me a few lines i am your mother how i have longed to see you my health is failing me the children often ask about you and wonder dont fail me dear child you are just the same to me as the rest love to you Blanchie from your heart broken mother
[60]
Mag Haggerty's Horse.
TOMMIE RYAN'S HORSE
Tommie Ryan and his wife (Mary Richfield) live in a very charming house at Sayville, Long Island. The Ryan horse lived in the barn. Although, if Mrs. Tommie had had her way, he would have lived in the parlor. For "Abner" was the pride of her heart.
Abner had been in the family so long he had become a habit. He had grown so old that Tommie had to go out at night and fold him up and put him to bed; then in the morning he would have to go out and pry him up on to his feet again.
When Mrs. Ryan wanted to go for a drive, Tommie had to go along on his bicycle, to push the horse up the hills and hold it back going down the hills.
[61]Abner's teeth had grown so long that he looked like a wild boar. Tommie vows that he chewed all his hay for him for two years.
Finally Tommie got tired of acting as wet nurse to Abner and wanted to dispose of him some way; but Mrs. Ryan absolutely refused; she said Tommie had given her that horse "to keep" and she was going to keep him.
But finally, along towards fall, when it was time for them to start out on their winter's tour, Tommie evolved a deep, dark scheme. So he framed it up with the local livery stable man, that, as soon as they were gone, he was to dispose of Abner; sell him, if he could; if not, then give him away to some one who would treat him kindly and see that his last days were spent in peace and plenty. And, in order to cover up his duplicity, he left three letters with the livery stable man to be copied and mailed to him on stated dates.
Everything went off as planned; Abner was disposed of, and upon the first stated date the Ryans received the first letter; it stated that the distemper was rather prevalent among the best circles of Long Island Horse Society, but that as yet Abner was free
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