Richmond Palladium (Daily), Volume 33, Number 198, 31 August 1908 — Page 6

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By PORTER E. BROWNE.

Copyrieht 1908, by Thomaa H. McKe. OVER in one corner of the little cafe & careless and cursory orchestra was painfully maltreating the latest specimen of melodious petit larceny that "had found the fleeting favor of the public. "Estelle, My Prairie Belle," it was, and as its stereotyped trains filtered through the thick smoke of the room, the property man seated across from me, gazed in sad, wan pensiveness into his beer and, with the final chord that signified that the orchestra had at last done its worst, he gave vent to a Jeep, deep sigh and murmured, in abstracted pathos, "Estelle! Estelle!" and then relapsed into another staring Interval. I, wisely, forebore to Interrupt him; and at length he came to himself, and to me. "Oh," he said, with a little start. "I guess I must have been thinking, wasn't I?" I nodded. "You had all the symptoms," I returned. "Ain't it funny' he began;-tbcn, in abrupt transition: "That tune always sets me thinking of an Estelle I knowed once. ; And when I gets to thinking that way, I goes philandering off into the mazes of mem'ry until I don't know where I'm at I never told you about Estelle, did I?" I shook my head and pretended only a perfunctory interest in the sad tale of blighted love that I felt sure was to come. - Some people, you know, will tell you things only when they think you don't care much about hearing them; and the property - man was that kind. "Well," he said, at length, reminiscently, "it was this way. In eighteen ninety-seven I was out with 'The Queen of the Hayrem' company. Jhat was a great show. It was about a English girl who get3 kidnapped by a Turk and put into his harem. She has a sweetheart, and he climbs over the wall in the second act to rescue her. "The guy that owns the harem catches him there, and he says to his slaves (coons they were that we would pick : up in every town that we played), he says, 'Seize him! and the coons grabs the leading man and ties him hand and foot while the leading lady looks on, weeping and wailing and wringing her hands and telling the coons out of the side of her face that was turned away from the audience to be careful not to walk on her train or she'd tell the manager and they'd lose their jobs. "In the next act, for revenge, the Turk guy puts the leading man into a lion's den and ties the leading woman with a log chain where she can get a good view while the lion eats up her lover. But just as the lion is about to make good, the leading woman bursts her chain and runs into the den and charms the lion with her gaze long enough to untie the leading man. Then they both beat it while the lion's coming out of the Trilby that she has put 'him Into A hot situation, eh?" I nooded. "Very," I agreed. "Well," went on the property mam, "we is booked to open in Hoboken. The manager has bought a ex-circus lion for the big scene; and of course he is in my charge. "They come driving him over from New York In a cage whioh is loaded onto a truck. They makes almighty good time, too, for the horses can smell him (and I don't wonder!), and it stimulates them to Buch an extent that they tries seven times to get off the ferry boat between docks; and when finally they do get ashore they yank the wheels off from three cabs and a mail wagon and come up to the theayter like they were pulling Steamer Ten to a general alarm fire. Tame animals is always afraid of wild ones that way. I knowed a leopard trainer to go out one evening without changing hi3 clothes and hire a cab against the wind. And then, when the breeze changed so the horse could smell Jxlm well, they was chunks of that cab all the way from Forty-second Street to the Battery, and then some. But that ain't got nothing to do with Estelle. "When they gets In front of the theayter, they sends in for me and I goes out, not unperturbed In mind; for it ain't no joke to go chaperoning a lion around the country. But when I get my lamps focussed on the poor animal who's laying back in ono corner of his cage looking tired and discouraged and car-6lck, I don't feel no other emotion but pity. "He sure ain't no beauty to look at. In the "beast deck, he's more like a dooce than a king. He's got one bum eye and he's kind of moth-eaten, and laded around the edges, and his whiskers looked like they'd been trimmed by an Eyetalian barber Tfho's In a hurry to get away to a street festival. He is certainly a pitiful-looking object. "We gets him stored in one corner of the stage and I goes out to buy him a slab of cow and some dog biscuit. "When I shoves this provender in through the bars of his cage, he dont, like I naturally expects, come charging down on it with his mouth full of growls and a wild light in his windows. Instead, "he merely lays where he is, casting a peevish and disappointed gaze upon the sirloin and crackers. Then, when he sees that I am watching him, he bats his eye up at me, grateful and appreciative, and opens his mouth as apologetically as you please, and I see the reason for his peculiar conduct, which Is that he ain't got a tooth in his head. His jaws is as bare of ornament as an unpaid for cemetery site. So I exchanges the carnivora banquet for a couple of gallons of milk and half a dozen loaves of bread. "The lion takes this juvenile repast like he was m kitten, waggling his tail gentle as you please and purring like one of them rlvettlng machines they uses on skyscrapers. And every once in a while he blinks at me in grateful thanks. Then, when at last he's absorbed his feed, he comes over to the side of the cage and smiles at me his deep appreciation for what I have did for him and then goes over to the corner of the cage, turns around three r four times and lays down; and, resting his head between his paws, he. goes off into a snooze that makes the drops quiver. "Byme-bye, about seven o'clock, the members of the company shows up. Of course the first thing they does it to beat it over to the lions' cage. And

there they stands, sizing up his nobs, who Is sleeping as peaceful as a hobo on a " park bench who knows the cop on the beat is in a saloon. ""Ain't she a beauty!' says the leading lady, whose knowledge of zoology seems to be somewhat sooperflcial. 'What is her name?' " 'I don't know, I says. 'The guys that brought her over here calls her a lot Of things; but none don't seem to be exactly what you might term a cognomen. " 'Then,' said the leading lady, excitedly, 'I shall name her after myself. She shall be called Estelle; and I shall buy her a gold collar!' " 'A set of false teeth would be a far more useful present, I says. But I am interrupted by a chorus of enthusiastic but bashful ladies, all of who thinks her own name is the best and wants to name the lion after herself. I've always found that ladles are very careless students of natooral history. "They're having a row which would wake up anything but that lion when the manager comes in. He i3 kind of soft on the leading lady. So when she promulgates her decision to name the lion Estelle, he sees a chance to make himself solid without it costing him a cent; so he merely grins and announces that hereafter the lion is named Estelle. And that settles it. He's Estelle. "Now the big scene comes in the third act. Just before the curtain rings up, it's my job to take Estelle out of his cage and tie him to a mountain, stage left. "When they was signing the company, they had seventeen property men refuse the job on account of the lion taming specialty that went with it. But I had been doing the Dead March up and down Broadway all summer and just at that moment I would havo agreed to be valet de shamber to a whole African jungle if there was a chance to eat went with the job. So I signs. "You can make up your mind I'm on the point of giving up the job several or more times before the show get3 going. But I decides to wait long enough at least to see what kind of a quadruped they stacks me up against.

"CHARMS THE LION WITH "Estelle's friendly attitood encourages me a lot; but still all my doubts ain't dispelled by a long way for, notwithstanding her grateful attentions after I feeds her, I'm not so sure that when I goes Into the cage she won't remember that, even if her teeth are non compos mentis, her hooks are still good, and want to practice a little vivisection work on my shrinking form. Wild animals, you know, have a grace of bearing and a gentleness of manner when they are caged -up alone that they sometimes forgets when they aro in human society. "All through the first and second acts that night, my pedal extremeties is getting more and more chilled; and when the curtain finally rings down on the last scene of the second, they're so cold that I could have put 'em in a tub of hot alcohol and froze it solid. My knees wabbles like I has the ague and I keeps lapping my lips with my tongue and then wondering why I done it; for it's like wiping a gravel roof with a doormat. "I watches them Hoboken scene slammers putting up the mountain and has almost decided to beat it when the manager comes waltziDg over to where I'm giving an imitation of the unfortunate herowine freezing to death on the church steps at midnight in 'Turned Adrift; or. Out in the Cold, Cold World.' " 'Aw, what's the matter with you?' says the manager sourcastically. 'Have you got locomotive ataxia, or are you only shaking yourself for the drinks? Get Estelle out of his cage and hitch him to that ring bolt on the mountain. And get a move on. See?' "I tries to answer; but the words get lost in the gravel in my elementary canal, and nothing comes out. " 'Do a Daniel, says the manager. 'Do a Daniel. What's the matter, anyhow? You ain't afraid, are you? Why, he wouldn't bite a cream puff. But if you're scared I'll send home for my three-year-old niece to come In and do it. Hell! Did I hire a man or a blooming old woman? Huh? "Now no guy can stand being talked to like that. So I bristled myself up, shut my eyes and wabbled

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into the cage with my hair standing up like a German diplomat's. "But there wasn't no call at all to be afraid. Just like the manager said, Estelle was the height of compatabality. A mustard plaster was cold and distant compared to him. And without no trouble at all except that he jumps up on me and tries to kiss me, I takes him out and hitches him to the mountain. "The curtain goes up showing a panorama of burning sand embellished with potted palms and the mountain which Estelle is tied to. And in another minute the coons comes on dragging the leading man. "Of course, nobody but me and the manager has yet mixed up with Estelle socially, and for all the rest may know, he's the concentrated squlntessense of unadulterated savagery. So you can bet them coons ties up the leading man like they'd worked all their lives at the bundle counter, and then ducks off the stage like the theayter was afire; which, of course, adds verisimilitood to the scene and don't encourage the leading man none too much. "Estelle after gazing in disappointment and lonely surprise after the disappearing coons, sees the leading man and perks up quite some. He purrs a little and rubs himself socially against the mountain and then starts to go across to where that hysterical guy is tethered. "The leading man forgets his bonds and gets ready to make a flying start for the wings. With his eyes bugged out so you could have knocked 'em off' with a stick and his hair standing up all over his head like needles on the peevish porcupine, as the feller says, he waits until Estelle is within eighteen inches of him. Then, so sudden that in comparison to him a streak of lightning would be slow and sedentary, he gives a yell and starts off for the wings in such a hurry that he knocks the leading woman, who's just coming on to rescue him, off Into the bass drum, and disappears from view. "The curtain's rung down, and the manager goes out onto the apron of the stage and tells the audi-

HER GAZE LONG. ENOUGH TO UNTIE THE LEADING MAN. THEN THEY BOTH BEAT IT A

ence, which is all trying to get out of the theayter at once, that there ain't no danger that the savage brute has been subdued and put back into his cage and so on and so forth until there ain't nobody left in the house tq talk to, and next afternoon we opens In Paterson. "Knowing Estelle's social propensities, we are somewhat doubtful next day when we raises the curtain on the third act. But, being as we've managed to give the leading man full and unqualified confidence in Estelle's pacific Intentions and unbounded amiability, we're hoping for the best. "And bo it was, when the coons had dragged the leading man on, and had departed like a bunch of two-year-olds In a steeplechase, leaving the leading man to tie his own hands and feet, the done so unmoved. And when Estelle went sociallly toward him, he didn't try to break no sprinting records, but just lay there gritting his teeth and trying to appear dignified and courageous. "But would you believe it, before the leading woman had a chance to get on the stage and save the leading man, Estelle has laid down comfortably alongside that languishing guy and went to sleep! And all through that thrilling 6aving scene he don't wake up at all, but just lays there and snores so that when the herowine yells, 'Sweetheart, you are safe at last!' you can't hear her at all. He don't wake up until after the curtain is down and the audience Is yelling itself sick. And then I has to go out and prod him six or eight times with a Bcimiter before he'll come to. "During the next six weeks I got to be very fond of Estelle, and he got to be very fond of me, too. You know how you'll grow to love a good, faithful, affectionate dorg that'B big, and slow, and poky, and that is perfectly and soopremely happy when he can put his head on your knee and have you rub his nose. "Well, that's just how It was wlthme and Estelle. "And we kept on getting more and more that way every day. In fact, byme-bye Estelle gets so attached to me that he just can't abide to have me leave him at alL He'll cry and mop and whine

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and beller every time I go away from him, and take on so he'll scare the wioie community iutj fits; and after they had to tent for me fifteen or twenty times at three o'clock in the morning and comfort him, I decided the best thing to do was to sleep there. I saved a lot of money in lodgings by it, too. "By the time we gets to Kokomo, we're Demon and Pythias. Romeo and Juliet were enemies compared to us, and Hamlet and Ophelia hated each other's signatures on a promissory note. Estelle couldn't spare me long enough even to give me time to get a drink, and I had to have all my meals brought into the theayter to me. "I bad to swear off smoking complete when there wasn't no one around; for I couldn't even go outside the stage door for a cigarette but what Estelle would be whooping and howling and yowling and yelping so that people would come running from every which way; and once the Society for the Invention of Cruelty to animals got after us; and I had to put my head in Estell's mouth and show the places where his hair was coming out from high feeding to prove that I wasn't maltreating him. "He loved me so that we could hardly get him to stay on the stage while the leading lady was saving her lover from him. The only way we could work it at all wa3 for me to stay with him until the last minute and then to stand out as far as I dared in the wings and whisper to him. And even then the whole scene had to be played In the time it took Estelle to turn around and make his exit. "One night the manager come around and he was sore. " 'Now, look a' here,' he says to me. 'This thing has gotter quit. It's getting worse an' worse all the time. Having to play that whole dam'

A lit wy ( ,f!' I v. X ton) I uPP'yirs

scene in seventeen seconds makes it lose all its thrilling Impresslveness. Why, the leading lady has to come on like the driver of Chemical A, and if she misses the first swipe she makes at them bonds, the Hon3 got his back turned and is on his way home. It wont do. " 'Now,' he goes on, 'I want you to keep out of the way to-night after you've led him onto the stage. Duck quick when he alnt looking and maybe he'll be busy thinking things over long enough to let us get through the scene right. "Well, I done what he told me to. And that night before even the leading lady could reach the leading man, Estelle had turned around, and, hearing my footsteps, had tried to climb through the back drop curtain, with the result that he tore It down and thereby exposed to the gaze of the audience, a full view of Estelle kissing me like we just been reyoonited after years of separation, the manager cursing a blue streak and the company and stage hands laffing and slapping their legs fit to kill. It was the most appreciated scene we ever give; but it didn't seem to make no hit with the management. They cancelled us and we had to lay off the rest of the week. "By the time we opens in the next burg, this brainy manager of ourn has framed up a new scheme. " 'I'll lead him on myself to-night,' he says. Yoa can auck right after the second act. Then we'll let him hunt all around until he knows you ain't there, and mayce he'll be contented to do the scene right. Of course he'll howl and all that; but that'll only lend extra color to the thing. " 'All right,' I says, though I was mighty dubious about the lustre of his idea. 'You're the doctor. "I done what he told me to. Right after the curtain had fell on the second act, I beat It out the stage door. "I could hear Estelle already yelling and yowling and wauling fit to make a 6iren whistle ashamed of itself, and my heart ached for him In his loneliness. But I wouldn't go back. 'Orders is orders I says, and strolled down to the front of the house. " 'What the matter la there? asks tie man on Jr,yt'yy

SEMENTS

the door, as I walties In the lobby. "That dam animated door-mat you've got in behind Is tearing it off so the audience Is frightened to death. Three women has fainted already and the people Is going out faster n I ever seen 'em come in In my life. Look a' there. "I looked. Seventeen reople was all at one trying to get through a door that was originally Intended to accommodate a thin guy going sideways. " 'I guess I better go inside, 1 says. " I guess you'd better, says the door-man. 'There ought to be at least one person in there for the actors to play to. "By violent efforts I manages to get inside and work my way half-way down a side aisle, go's to be out of the rush. "I could hear 'em on the stage setting scenery at a rate fit to .ust the speed ordinances into chunks; and I knowed the manager had saw how things was going, but was shamed to admit that his idea was a frost, and so was trying to get the scene over with and reyoonite me and Estelle before the audi ence had went home. "The curtain was rung up In a jiffy; and of course the people that was still in the theayter turned to look. Poor Estelle was nosing around the stage dragging the mountain after him, and aiming his one good eye this way and that In a frantic effort to find me, and ail the while letting out roars and yowls and yips and yells that made the photograph frames in the lobby rattle. "He only had one good eye. But that one was certainly a peach. In less than a minute he had spotted me; and with one delighted, joyous beller of pure happiness, he leaps over the footlights, still towing the mountain after him, and begins to sprad-

HOT SITUATION, EH?" die his way jubilantly across the backs of the seats to the spot where I'm standing. "Of course, for what was left of the audience, ' that was a-plenty, and then some. They stood not on the order of their going. They just went. How they done It Is too many for me. The light people climbed over the heavy ones, and the thin people crawled under the fat ones. Winders or doors, it was all the same to them. I couldn't tell you any more about it to save my life. AH I know "" Is that in less 'n thirty seconds me and Estelle Is standing alone in that vast ampitheayter, listening; to the manager say soothingly from the stage: "It's all right, ladies and gents. They is really no cause for alarm, I ashore you. It's all right, ladies and gents.' And when at last he realizes that it's only me and Estelle he's talking to, he says, kind of helpless and feeble-like, 'Well, wha d' yer know about that!' and tries to walk through the curtain." The property man ceased speaking and thoughtfully gazed into his beer. "And what then?" I queried. "I got me two weeks notice, he returned succinctly. "For what? I demanded in some surprise. "You can search me," he returned; and then with the disdain and hauteur of the true historian. "Only the good Lords knows why they do thethings they do In some companies. But they gives as a excuse that they thought if they could get some one Estelle didn't love so much as he did me. maybe they could get him to stay on the stage long enough to let them play the scene." "And Estelle," I persisted. "What became of him?" The property man was gaziag Into his beer with saddened eyes. I reiterated my query. "Oh. Estelle!" he exclaimed, banishing with an effort the clinging mists of retrospection. "Estells committed suicide." "What!" I cried. "Yes, he nodded sadly. "And they Rewrote his part for a stuffed, tljer." PAY rtTrsFfjyr y y y gsTFjsi