Colonel Crocketts Co-operative Christmas | Page 5

show, more'n two thousand women would get trampled to death? Did you ever see a bargain-counter crowd on Twenty-third Street? Well, that's only for a chance to get something they don't want at a fishbait price. But if you offered them a free, 'take-one' chance--holy keewhiz!--I can just see it now! The Garden ain't half big enough in the first place. There's enough Take-One'ers in these parts to fill the old Coliseum. And they'd make the wild animals look like a cage of rabbits or white mice."
Well, the upshot of it was, he persuaded me to charge an admission; so we set it at $1.00 a head "on the hoof." I wrote out a card and sent it to all the papers to print at advertising rates. It cost right smart, but it looked neat:
TO EVERY STRANGER IN NEW YORK, AND HIS LADY
If you are not otherwise engaged on Christmas night, the honor of your presence at Madison Square Garden is requested by
DAVID AUSTIN CROCKETT
Colonel Fifth Texas Cavalry, C. S. A.
Music, Dancing, Refreshments, Souvenirs. For the purpose of keeping out the undesirable element a charge of $1.00 will be made.
I knew that them magic words, "Refreshments" and "Souvenirs," would hit 'em hard. In order to whet the public interest, I asked the papers where I advertised to give the thing some editorial or other reference. But they was very cold and said the best they could do was to send their dramatic critics to criticise the show afterward. A lot of good that would do me! So I took more space in advertising.
In a day or two I was visited at the hotel by one of the most imperent young fellows I ever met up with. He sent up a card, "James J. James, Publicity Expert." I said to show him in, and he sort of oozed through the door--he was that oily. He looked about to see if we was alone; then winked slow and important, and says:
"What's your game, Colonel? It looks pretty slick, but I can't quite make it out. It's a new bunco, all right, but slick as it looks, it ain't quite so slick as it ought to be."
"Look here, you cub," I roared, "if you imply that I have any evil motives in this, I'll shoot you so full of holes you'll look like a mosquito net!"
He wasn't a bit scared; he simply winked the other eye, and said in a kind of foreign-sounding language:
"Forget it, Colonel! Cut it out! Back to the alfalfa with your Buffalo Bill vocabulary! If you are really on the level, you don't need to prove it with artillery. But it makes no diff. to me about that. My business is producing fame, not merit. Once more I ask, what's your lay?"
[Illustration: JAMES J. JAMES, PUBLICITY EXPERT]
I overcame a desire to kick him through the ceiling, and told him I proposed to entertain the strangers in New York.
"Strangers in New York?--Why, that means everybody! There's been only one man born in New York since the war, and he's kept in alcohol at a dime muzhum. Your idea is really to give old New York a Christmas party, eh? Very pretty! Very pretty, indeed! But if you insist on exploding money all over the place, I don't see why you shouldn't get a run for it. Besides, I need a bit of it myself. What you want is a press agent. You're starting all wrong. People in New York can't understand or believe anything except through the language of the press agent. You take one on your staff, and in three days you'll be so famous that, if a child in a kindergarten is asked who is the Queen of Holland, it will answer: 'Colonel Crockett, of Waco.'"
Well, he poured out the most remarkable string of talk I ever heard, and before I knew it he had made me promise to trust my soul and my scheme to him; to be surprised at nothing that might appear in the papers, and to refer all reporters to him. The next morning I found my name on the front page of every journal, with my picture in most of them. It seems I had held at bay two hundred angry Italians who were trying to mob a Chinese laundryman. The evening papers said that I had stopped a runaway coach-and-four on Fifth Avenue, that morning, by lassoing the leader. On the coach were Mrs. Aster, Mrs. Fitch, Reggie Vanderbuilt, George Goold, Harry Leer and a passel of other "Among those presents." That night I went to a music-hall--according to the next morning's papers--and broke up the show by throwing a pocketful of solitaires to the chorus girls. The next day three burglars got into my room; I held them up in a