Strictly Business | Page 4

one is a surmise that has no place here. I offer you merely this little
story of two strollers; and for proof of its truth I can show you only the
dark patch above the cast-iron of the stage-entrance door of Keetor's
old vaudeville theatre made there by the petulant push of gloved hands
too impatient to finger the clumsy thumb-latch-- and where I last saw
Cherry whisking through like a swallow into her nest, on time to the
minute, as usual, to dress for her act.
The vaudeville team of Hart & Cherry was an inspiration. But Hart had
been roaming through the Eastern and Western circuits for four years
with a mixed-up act comprising a monologue, three lightning changes
with songs, a couple of imitations of celebrated imitators, and a
buck-and-wing dance that had drawn a glance of approval from the
bass-viol player in more than one house--than which no performer ever
received more satisfactory evidence of good work.
The greatest treat an actor can have is to witness the pitiful
performance with which all other actors desecrate the stage. In order to

give himself this pleausre he will often forsake the sunniest Broadway
corner between Thirty-fourth and Forty-fourth to attend a matin'ee
offering by his less gifted brothers. Once during the lifetime of a
minstrel joke one comes to scoff and remains to go through with that
most difficult exercise of Thespian muscles--the audible contact of the
palm of one hand against the palm of the other.
One afternoon Bob Hart presented his solvent, serious, well-known
vaudevillian face at the box-office window of a rival attraction and got
his d. h. coupon for an orchestra seat.
A, B, C, and D glowed successively on the announcement spaces and
passed into oblivion, each plunging Mr. Hart deeper into gloom. Others
of the audience shrieked, squirmed, whistled, and applauded; but Bob
Hart, "All the Mustard and a Whole Show in Himself," sat with his face
as long and his hands as far apart as a boy holding a hank of yarn for
his grandmother to wind into a ball.
But when H came on, "The Mustard" suddenly sat up straight. H was
the happy alphabetical prognosticator of Winona Cherry, in Character
Songs and Impersonations. There were scarcely more than two bites to
Cherry; but she delivered the merchandise tied with a pink cord and
charged to the old man's account. She first showed you a deliciously
dewy and ginghamy country girl with a basket of property daisies who
informed you ingenuously that there were other things to be learned at
the old log school-house besides cipherin' and nouns, especially "When
the Teach-er Kept Me in." Vanishing, with a quick flirt of gingham
apron-strings, she reappeared in considerably less than a "trice" as a
fluffy "Parisienne"--so near does Art bring the old red mill to the
Moulin Rouge. And then--
But you know the rest. And so did Bob Hart; but he saw somebody else.
he thought he saw that Cherry was the only professional on the short
order stage that he had seen who seemed exactly to fit the part of
"Helen Grimes" in the sketch he had written and kept tucked away in
the tray of his trunk. Of course Bob Hart, as well as every other normal
actor, grocer, newspaper man, professor, curb broker, and farmer, has a
play tucked away somewhere. They tuck 'em in trays of trunks, trunks
of trees, desks, haymows, pigeonholes, inside pockets, safe-deposit
vaults, handboxes, and coal cellars, waiting for Mr. Frohman to call.
They belong among the fifty-seven different kinds.

But Bob Hart's sketch was not destined to end in a pickle jar. He called
it "Mice Will Play." He had kept it quiet and hidden away ever since he
wrote it, waiting to find a partner who fitted his conception of "Helen
Grimes." And here was "Helen" herself, with all the innocent abandon,
the youth, the sprightliness, and the flawless stage art that his critical
taste demanded.
After the act was over Hart found the manager in the box office, and
got Cherry's address. At five the next afternoon he called at the musty
old house in the West Forties and sent up his professional card.
By daylight, in a secular shirtwaist and plain voile skirt, with her hair
curbed and her Sister of Charity eyes, Winona Cherry might have been
playing the part of Prudence Wise, the deacon's daughter, in the great
(unwritten) New England drama not yet entitled anything.
"I know your act, Mr. Hart," she said after she had looked over his card
carefully. "What did you wish to see me about?"
"I saw you work last night," said Hart. "I've written a sketch that I've
been saving up. It's for two; and I think you can do the