Pipefuls | Page 6

to Eliza." This sounds (we contend) quite a
harmless sentiment, but the director insisted that the person speaking,
being an Englishman of studious disposition, would not say anything so
inaccurate. "He would use much more correct language," said the
director. "He ought to say 'I purpose to send.'" We balked mildly at this.
"All right," said our mentor. "The trouble with you is you don't know
any English. I'll send you a copy of the Century dictionary."
This gentleman carried purism to almost extravagant lengths. He
objected to the customary pronunciation of "jew's-harp," insisting that
the word should be "juice-harp," and instructing the actor who
mentioned this innocent instrument of melody to write it down so in his
script. When the dress rehearsal came round, he was surveying the "set"

for the first act with considerable complacence. This scenery was
intended to represent a very ancient English inn at Stratford-on-Avon,
and one of the authors was heard to remark softly that it looked more
like a broker's office on Wall Street. But the director was unshaken.
"There's an old English inn up at Larchmont," said he, "and this looks a
good deal like it, so I guess we're all right."
Let any one who imagines the actor's life is one of bevo and skittles
sally along with a new play on its try-out in the one-night circuit. When
one sees the delightful humour, fortitude, and high spirits with which
the players face their task he gains a new respect for the profession. It is
with a sense of shame that the wincing author hears his lines repeated
night after night--lines that seem to him to have grown so stale and
disreputably stupid, and which the ingenuity of the players contrives to
instill with life. With a sense of shame indeed does he reflect that
because one day long ago he was struck with a preposterous idea, here
are honest folk depending on it to earn daily bread and travelling on a
rainy day on a local train on the Central New England Railway; here
are 800 people in Saratoga Springs filing into a theatre with naïve
expectation on their faces. Amusing things happen faster than he can
stay to count them. A fire breaks out in a cigar store a few minutes
before theatre time. It is extinguished immediately, but half the town
has rushed down to see the excitement. The cigar store is almost next
door to the theatre, and the crowd sees the lighted sign and drops in to
give the show the once-over, thus giving one a capacity house. Then
there are the amusing accidents that happen on the stage, due to the
inevitable confusion of one-night stands with long jumps each day,
when scenery and props arrive at the theatre barely in time to be set up.
In the third act one of the characters has to take his trousers out of a
handbag. He opens the bag, but by some error no garments are within.
Heavens! has the stage manager mixed up the bags? He has only one
hope. The girlish heroine's luggage is also on the stage, and our
comedian dashes over and finds his trousers in her bag. This casts a
most sinister imputation on the adorable heroine, but our friend
(blessings on him) contrives it so delicately that the audience doesn't
get wise. Then doors that are supposed to be locked have a habit of
swinging open, and the luckless heroine, ready to say furiously to the

hero, "Will you unlock the door?" finds herself facing an open doorway
and has to invent a line to get herself off the stage.
Going on the road is a very humanizing experience and one gathers a
considerable respect for the small towns one visits. They are so brisk,
so proud in their local achievements, so prosperous and so full of
attractive shop-windows. When one finds in Johnstown, N. Y., for
instance, a bookshop with almost as well-assorted a stock as one would
see here in Philadelphia; or in Gloversville and Newburgh public
libraries that would be a credit to any large city, one realizes the great
tide of public intelligence that has risen perceptibly in recent years. At
the hotel in Gloversville the proprietress assured us that "an English
duke" had just left who told her that he preferred her hotel to the
Biltmore in New York. We rather wondered about this English duke,
but we looked him up on the register and found that he was Sir H.
Urnick of Fownes Brothers, the glove manufacturers, who have a
factory in Gloversville. But then, being a glove manufacturer, he may
have been kidding her, as the low comedian of our troupe observed.
But the local pride of the small town is a genial thing. It may