Continuous Vaudeville Part 8

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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.

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 from it.

Two weeks later a letter came to St. Louis stating that Abner was afflicted, but very slightly.

At Milwaukee a week later the third letter came, describing in detail the last sad rites attending the death and burial of Abner.

As the weeks pa.s.sed by Mrs. Ryan grew resigned and Tommie grew happy.

And then came their engagement at Buffalo. Upon arrival at the theater, Tommie found eleven letters; one was from the livery stable man at home; this one he slipped into his overcoat pocket for a private reading later on. While he was reading the other ten, his turn came to rehea.r.s.e his music; he slipped the ten letters into the same pocket with the livery stable man's letter, and forgot all about the whole lot.

Arriving at the hotel, Mrs. Ryan asked him for the mail and he handed the whole lot over to her. The first one that she opened was the livery stable man's. It stated that the family he had given Abner to, according to Tom's directions, had just been arrested for beating and starving Abner.

I can't tell the rest; it is too sad; but to this day, every time Mrs.

Ryan thinks of Abner, she looks at Tommie, and he goes out and sits in the Park.

"Thou Shalt Not Steal," said the sign in the car.

The conductor looked at it and laughed "ha ha."

And he pinched four dollars, and whistled the air,

"None but the brave deserve the fare."

After six weeks' travel the Harry Lauder Company had reached San Francisco; every night of that six weeks Hugo Morris had taken Lauder out to some restaurant to exhibit and feed him. On this first night in San Francisco, the show had been an uncommonly large success, and "Spendthrift Harry" was feeling generous. So he said to Hugo,

"Wull, Hugo, I bane thinkin'; every nicht sen we left New York you ha'

taken me oot as your guest; you ha' entertained me grand; I ha' never seen anything like it in ma own country. An' I ha come to the conclusion tha' it is not richt for me to let yo' do a' the treatin'. An' so to-nicht I wi' toss yo' a penny to see who pays for the supper."

He did so, and Hugo got stuck.

Wouldn't Alan Dale feel at home in a "Pan"tages theater?

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Shun Licker."]

One morning in Chicago I received a pressing invitation to come over to the police station and bail out "A Fallen Star." Upon arriving there I found the aforesaid Star sitting on the edge of his bunk holding his head in his hands and wishing it had never happened.

Like all Good Samaritans I started in delivering a Frances Murphy to him; I told him how he was ruining his health, fortune and reputation; I was really making quite a hit--with myself. Suddenly a rat scampered along the corridor by the door. The Fallen Star saw it, started, glanced sharply at me, then regained his composure. I was going ahead with my temperance lecture, when he glanced up at me a second time and said sharply,

"I know what you think; you think I think I saw a rat--but I didn't."

One summer we took our Property Man up on the farm in New Hampshire with us; one day my wife was trying to describe a man that she wanted him to find over to the village:

"He is a rather stout man," she said; "has reddish hair, wears blue gla.s.ses and has locomotor ataxia."

"Oh, yes," interrupted the Property Man, "I seen it; he keeps it up in George Blodgett's barn; I see it every night when I go after the cow."

The manager of a little theater in Des Moines closed an act on a Thursday; I asked him what the matter was with the actor:

"Too officious, front and back."

B. F. Keith had two theaters in Philadelphia; one on Eighth Street and one on Chestnut Street. One week while we were appearing at the Chestnut Street house one of the papers had a picture of me. Not having s.p.a.ce enough for the whole name of the theater, they cut it down so that the announcement read--

"WILL M. CRESSY. KEITH'S CHESTNUT."

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Widow's Mite.]

The train had stopped at Reno for a few minutes; it was just at dusk and as the night was warm we got out and were walking up and down the platform. There was a billboard at the end of the station and the bill poster was pasting up some paper advertising the coming of "The Widow's Mite" Company. An old chap came along, stopped and looked at it, but, owing to the poor light could not quite make out what it was; so he said to the bill poster,

"What show is it, Bill?"

"The Widow's Mite."

The old fellow pondered on it for a moment, then as he turned away he said, half to himself,