A Guest at the Ludlow, and Other Stories by Bill Nye (ereader ebook TXT) 📖

pupils will live on my property and go to school at Sitka.

Trade is quiet in that quarter at present, however, and traffic is practically at a standstill. A good many people have written to me asking about my subdivision and how various branches of industry would thrive there. Having in an unguarded moment used the stamps, I hasten to say that they would be premature in going there now, unless in pursuit of rabbits, which are extremely prevalent.

Trade is very dull, and a first or even a second national bank in my subdivision of the United States would find itself practically out of a job. A good newspaper, if properly conducted, could have some fun and get a good many advertisements by swopping kind words at regular catalogue prices for goods. But a theater would not pay. I write this for the use of a man who has just written to know if a good opera-house with folding seats would pay a fair investment on capital. No, it would not. I will be fair and honest. Smart[Pg 77]ing as I do yet under the cruel injustice done me by the meek and gentle groceryman, who, while he wept upon my corrugated bosom with one hand, softly removed my pelt with the other and sprinkled Chili sauce all over me, I will not betray my own friends. Even with my still bleeding carcass quivering under the Halford sauce of Mr. Pansley, the "skin" and hypocrite, the friend of the far-distant savage and the foe of those who are his unfortunate neighbors, I will not betray even a stranger. Though I have used his postage-stamp I shall not be false to him. An opera-house this fall would be premature. Most everybody's dates are booked, anyhow. We could not get Francis Wilson or Nat C. Goodwin or Lillian Russell or Henry Irving or Mr. Jefferson, for they are all too busy turning people away, and I would hate to open with James Owen O'Connor or any other mechanical appliance.

No. Wait another year at least. At present an opera-house in my subdivision of the solar system would be as useless as a Dull Thud in the state of New York.[Pg 78]

One drawback to the immediate prosperity of the place is that commutation rates are yet in their infancy. Eighty-seven and one-half cents per ride on trains which run only on Tuesdays and Fridays is not sufficient compensation for the long and lonely walk and the paucity of some suitable cottages when one gets there.

So I will sell the dear old place, with all its associations and the good-will of a thriving young frog conservatory, at the buyer's price. As I say, there has been since I was last there a steady growth, which is mostly noticeable on the mortgage that I secured along with the property. It was on there when I bought it, and as it could not be removed without injury to the realty, according to an old and established law of Justinian or Coke or Littleton, Mr. Pansley ruled that it was part of the property and passed with its conveyance. It is looking well, with a nice growth of interest around the edges and its foreclosure clause fully an inch and a half long.

I shall be willing, in case I do not find a[Pg 79] cash buyer, to exchange the property for almost anything I can eat, except Paris green. Nor should I hesitate to swap the whole thing, to a man whom I felt that I could respect, for a good bird dog. I am also willing to trade the lots for a milk route or a cold storage. It would be a good site for some gentleman in New York to build a country cottage.

I should also swap the estate to a man who really means business for a second-hand cellar. Call on or address the undersigned early, and please do not push or rudely jostle those in the line ahead of you.

Cast-off clothing, express prepaid, and free from all contagious diseases, accepted at its full value. Anything left by mistake in the pockets will be taken good care of, and, possibly, returned in the spring.

Gunnysack Oleson, who lives eight miles north of the county line, will show you over the grounds. Please do not hitch horses to the trees. I will not be responsible for horses injured while tied to my trees.

A new railroad track is thinking of getting a right of way next year, which may be[Pg 80] nearer by two miles than the one that I have to take, provided they will let me off at the right place.

I promise to do all that I can conscientiously for the road, to aid any one who may buy the property, and I will call the attention of all railroads to the advisability of a road in that direction. All that I can honorably do, I will do. My honor is as dear to me as my gas bill every year I live.

N. B.—The dead horse on lot 9, block 21, Nye's Addition to the Solar System, is not mine. Mine died before I got there.[Pg 81]

A SINGULAR "HAMLET" IX

The closing debut of that great Shakespearian humorist and emotional ass, Mr. James Owen O'Connor, at the Star Theater, will never be forgotten. During his extraordinary histrionic career he gave his individual and amazing renditions of Hamlet, Phidias, Shylock, Othello, and Richelieu. I think I liked his Hamlet best, and yet it was a pleasure to see him in anything wherein he killed himself.

Encouraged by the success of beautiful but self-made actresses, and hoping to win a place for himself and his portrait in the great soap and cigarette galaxy, Mr. O'Connor placed himself in the hands of some misguided elocutionist, and then sought to educate the people of New York and elocute them out of their thralldom up into the glo[Pg 82]rious light of the O'Connor school of acting.

The first week he was in the hands of the critics, and they spoke quite serenely of his methods. Later, it was deemed best to place his merits in the hands of a man who would be on an equal footing with him. What O'Connor wanted was one of his peers, who would therefore judge him fairly. I was selected because I know nothing whatever about acting and would thus be on an equality with Mr. O'Connor.

After seeing his Hamlet I was of the opinion that he did wisely in choosing New York for debutting purposes, for had he chosen Denver, Colorado, at the end of the third act kind hands would have removed him from the stage by means of benzine and a rag.

I understand that Mr. O'Connor charged Messrs. Henry E. Abbey and Henry Irving with using their influence among the masses in order to prejudice said masses against Mr. O'Connor, thus making it unpleasant for him to act, and inciting in the audience a feeling of gentle but evident hostility, which Mr.[Pg 83] O'Connor deprecated very much whenever he could get a chance to do so. I looked into this matter a little and I do not think it was true. Until almost the end of Mr. O'Connor's career, Messrs. Abbey and Irving were not aware of his great metropolitan success, and it is generally believed among the friends of the two former gentlemen that they did not feel it so keenly as Mr. O'Connor was led to suppose.

But James Owen O'Connor did one thing which I take the liberty of publicly alluding to. He took that saddest and most melancholy bit of bloody history, trimmed with assassinations down the back and looped up with remorse, insanity, duplicity and unrequited love, and he filled it with silvery laughter and cauliflower and mirth, and various other groceries which the audience throw in from time to time, thus making it more of a spectacular piece than under the conservative management of such old-school men as Booth, who seem to think that Hamlet should be soaked full of sadness.

I went to see Hamlet, thinking that I would[Pg 84] be welcome, for my sympathies were with James when I heard that Mr. Irving was picking on him and seeking to injure him. I went to the box office and explained who I was, and stated that I had been detailed to come and see Mr. O'Connor act; also that in what I might say afterwards my instructions were to give it to Abbey and Irving if I found that they had tampered with the audience in any way.

The man in the box office did not recognize me, but said that Mr. Fox would extend to me the usual courtesies. I asked where Mr. Fox could be found, and he said inside. I then started to go inside, but ran against a total stranger, who was "on the door," as we say. He was feeding red and yellow tickets into a large tin oven, and looking far, far away. I conversed with him in low, passionate tones, and asked him where Mr. Fox could be found. He did not know, but thought he was still in Europe. I went back and told the box office that Mr. Fox was in Europe. He said No, I would find him inside. "Well, but how shall I get inside?" I asked eagerly, for I could al[Pg 85]ready, I fancied, hear the orchestra beginning to twang its lyre.

"Walk in," said he, taking in $2 and giving back 50 cents in change to a man with a dead cat in his overcoat pocket.

I went back, and springing lightly over the iron railing while the gatekeeper was thinking over his glorious past, I went all around over the theater looking for Mr. Fox. I found him haggling over the price of some vegetables which he was selling at the stage door and which had been contributed by admirers and old subscribers to Mr. O'Connor at a previous performance.

When Mr. Fox got through with that I presented to him my card, which is as good a piece of job work in colors as was ever done west of the Missouri river, and to which I frequently point with pride.

Mr. Fox said he was sorry, but that Mr. O'Connor had instructed him to extend no courtesies whatever to the press. The press, he claimed, had said something derogatory to Mr. O'Connor as a tragedian, and while he personally would be tickled to death to[Pg 86] give me two divans and a folding-bed near the large fiddle, he must do as Mr. O'Connor had bid—or bade him, I forget which; and so, restraining his tears with great difficulty, he sent me back to the entrance and although I was already admitted in a general way, I went to the box office and purchased a seat. I believe now that Mr. Fox thought he had virtually excluded me from the house when he told me I should have to pay in order to get in.

I bought a seat in the parquet and went in. The audience was not large and there were not more than a dozen ladies present.

Pretty soon the orchestra began to ooze in through a little opening under the stage. Then the overture was given. It was called "Egmont." The curtain now arose on a scene in Denmark. I had asked an usher to take a note to Mr. O'Connor requesting an audience, but the boy had returned with the statement that Mr. O'Connor was busy rehearsing his soliloquy and removing a shirred egg from his outer clothing.

He also said he could not promise an au[Pg 87]dience to any one. It was all he could do to get one for himself.

So the play went on. Elsinore, where the first act takes place, is in front of a large stone water tank, where two gentlemen armed with long-handled hay knives are on guard.

All at once a ghost who walks with an overstrung Chickering action and stiff, jerky, Waterbury movement, comes in, wearing a dark mosquito net over his head—so that harsh critics can not truly say there are any flies on him, I presume. When the ghost enters most every one enjoys it. Nobody seems to be frightened at all. I knew it was not a ghost as quick as I looked at it. One man in the gallery hit the ghost on the head with a soda cracker, which made him jump and feel of his ear; so I knew then that it was only a man made up to look like a presence.

One of the guards, whose name, I think, was Smith, had a droop to