Continuous Vaudeville. Cressy Will Martin
'em over."
Seen from the car window: "Shuttz Hotel. Now open."
On Elmwood Avenue, Buffalo: "Organs and Sewing Machines tuned and repaired."
At the St. James Hotel, Philadelphia:
Mrs. Cressy. "Waiter, have you any snails today?"
Waiter. "No, mam."
Mrs. C. "What's the matter? Can't you catch them over here?"
ONE-NIGHT-STAND ORCHESTRAS
My idea of what not to be is Musical Director of a Musical Comedy playing one-night stands. This is the real thing in the Trouble line.
Max Faetkenheuer was musical director with an opera company that was playing through the South. They arrived in one town at four in the afternoon, and Max found the orchestra waiting at the theater. They looked doubtful; they sounded dreadful. Individually they were bad; collectively they were worse. During the first number the cornet only struck the right note once and that frightened him so he stopped playing. The clarinet player had been taking lessons from a banjo teacher for three years and had never made the same noise twice. There were six French horns, all Dutch. The trap drummer was blind and played by guess and by gorry.
Max labored and perspired and swore until 7:15; then he had to stop because the audience wanted to come in and didn't dare to while the riot was on.
"Now look, Mister Cornet Player," Max said; "I'll tell you what you do; you keep your mute in all through the show."
"Yes, well, I shan't be here myself, but I will speak to my 'sub' about it."
"What's the reason you won't be here?" asked Max.
"I play for a dance over to Masonic Hall."
"So do I," said the bass fiddler.
"We all do, but the drummer," said the flute player.
"You do? Then what the devil have you kept me here rehearsing you for three hours for?" demanded Max.
"Well," said the cornet player, "we knew this was a big show, and we presumed you would be a good director, and we thought the practice would do us good."
"It will," said Max.
On another occasion he struggled all the afternoon with a "Glee Club and Mandolin Serenaders'" orchestra. Finally, by cutting out all solos, playing all the accompaniments himself, and confining the "Glee Club" to "um-pahs," he got everything figured out except the cornet player; he was beyond pardon; so Max said to him,
"I am awful sorry, old man, but you won't do; so you just sit and watch the show to-night."
"Oh," said the Not-Jule-Levy, "then I don't play, eh?"
"You do not play," said Max.
"All right then; then there'll be no show."
"Why won't there be a show?" asked Max.
"Because I am the Mayor, and I will revoke your license."
He played.
At some Southern town we played once with "The Old Homestead"; the rehearsal was called for 4:30. At 4:30 all the musicians were there but the bass fiddler.
"Where is your bass fiddler?" asked our director.
"Well, he can't get here just yet," replied one of the other players.
"When will he be here?"
"Well, if it rains he is liable to be in any minute now; if it don't rain he can't get here until six o'clock."
"What has the rain got to do with it?"
"He drives the sprinkling cart."
The worst orchestra I ever heard was with an Uncle Tom's Cabin show playing East St. Louis. It consisted of two pieces; a clarinet and a bass fiddle, each worse than the other.
At North Goram, Maine, I once hired an entire brass band of twenty-two pieces to play for an entire evening of roller skating in the town hall, for three dollars. They were worth every dollar of it.
In one of my plays I issue a newspaper called The Wyoming Whoop. At the top of the first column are the words – "In Hoc Signo Vinces." One day one of the stage hands came to me with a copy of the paper in his hands, and pointing to this line, said,
"That means 'We Shoot to Kill,' don't it?"
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