Vignettes of Manhattan; Outlines in Local Color Part 29

"How so?" I asked.

"Well, it was this way," he explained. "Father, he was a Maine man, and he was a sea-captain. And when mother died, after a spell father he up and married again. Now that second wife of father's she didn't like me; and I didn't like her either, not overmuch. I guess there warn't no love lost between us. She liked to make a voyage with father now and then, and so did I. We was both with him on a voyage he made about the time the war broke out. We cleared for Cowes and a market, and along in the summer of '62 we was in the Mediterranean. It was towards the end of that summer we come into Genoa, and there we got a chance at the papers, all filled chock-full of battles. And it didn't seem as though things was going any too well over here, either, and so I felt I'd like to come home and lend a hand in putting down the rebellion. You see, I was past fourteen then, and I was tall for my age--'most as tall as I am now, I guess. I was doing a man's work on the s.h.i.+p, and I didn't see why I couldn't do a man's work in helping Uncle Sam, seeing he seemed to be having a hard time of it. And I don't mind telling you, too, that she had been making me have considerable of a hard time of it, too; and there warn't no way of contenting her, she was so all-fired pernicketty.

There was another s.h.i.+p in the harbor near us, and the captain was a sort of a kind of a cousin of mother's, and so I s.h.i.+pped with him and we come straight home from Genoa to Portsmouth. And when I wanted to enlist they wouldn't have me, saying I was too young, which was all foolishness. So I went for a drummer-boy, and I was in the Army of the Potomac from Gettysburg to Appomattox."

"You were only a boy even when the war was over," I commented.

"Well, I was seventeen, and I felt old enough to be seventy," he returned, as a smile wrinkled his lean features. "At any rate, I was old enough to get married the year after Lee surrendered, and my daughter was born the year after that--she'd be nearly thirty now if she was living to-day."

"Did you stay in one of the bands of the regulars after the war?" I asked, wondering how the sailor-lad who had become a drummer-boy had finally developed into a solo orchestra.

"No," he answered. "Not but what I did think of it some. But after being at sea so long and in the army, camping here and there and always moving on, I was restless, and I didn't want to settle down nowhere for long.

So I went into the show business. I'd always been fond of music, and I could play on 'most anything, from a fine-tooth comb to a church-organ with all the stops you please. So I went out with the side-show of a circus, playing on the tumbleronicon."

"The tumbleronicon?" I repeated, in doubt.

"It's a tray with a lot of winegla.s.ses on it and goblets and tumblers, partly filled with water, you know, so as to give different notes. Why, I've had one tumbleronicon of seven octaves that I used to play the 'Anvil Chorus' on, and always got a double encore for it. I believe it's what they used to call the 'musical gla.s.ses'--but tumbleronicon is what it's called now in the profession."

I admitted that I had heard of the musical gla.s.ses.

"It was while I was playing the tumbleronicon in that side-show that I met the lady I married," he went on. "She was a Circa.s.sian girl then.

Most Circa.s.sian girls are Irish, you know, but she wasn't. She was from the White Mountains. Well, I made up to her from the start, and when the circus went into winter-quarters we had a lot of money saved up and we got married. My wife hadn't a bad ear for music, so that winter we worked up a double act, and in the spring we went on the road as Swiss Bellringers. We dressed up just as I had seen the I-talians dress in Naples."

Again I asked for an explanation.

"Oh, you must have seen that act?" he urged, "though it has somehow gone out of style lately. It's to have a fine set of bells, three or four octaves, laying out on a table before you, and then you play tunes on them, just as you do on the tumbleronicon. There's some tunes go better on the bells than on anything else--'Yankee Doodle' and 'Pop Goes the Weasel.' It's quick tunes like them that folks like to have you pick out on the bells. Why, Mrs. Briggs and I used to do a patriotic medley, ending up with 'Rally Round the Flag,' that just made the soldiers'

widows cry. If we could only have gone on, we'd have been sure of our everlasting fortunes. But Mrs. Briggs went and lost her health after our daughter was born the next summer. We kept thinking all the time she'd get better soon, and so I took an engagement here in New York, at Barnum's old museum in Broadway, to play the drum in the orchestra. You remember Barnum's old museum, don't you?"

I was able to say that I did remember Barnum's old museum in Broadway.

"I didn't really like it there; for the animals were smelly, you know, and the work was very confining, what with two and three performances a day. But I had to stay here in New York somehow, for my wife wa'n't able to get away. The long and short of it is, she was sick a-bed nigh on to thirty years--not suffering really all the time, of course, but puny and ailing, and getting no comfort from her food. There was times I thought she never would get well or anything. But two years ago she up and died suddenly, just when I'd most got used to her being sick. Women's dreadful uncertain, ain't they?"

I had to confess that the course of the female of our species was more or less incalculable.

"My daughter, she died the year before her mother; and she'd never been sick a day in her life--took after me, she did," Professor Briggs went on. "She and her husband used to do Yankee Girl and Irish Boy duets in the vaudevilles, as they call them now."

I remarked that variety show, the old name for entertainments of that type, seemed to me more appropriate.

"That's what I think myself," he returned, "and that's what I'm always telling them. But they say vaudeville is more up to date--and that's what they want now, everything up to date. Now I think there's lots of the old-fas.h.i.+oned things that's heaps better than some of these new-fangled things they're so proud of. Take a three-ringed circus, for instance--what good is a three-ringed circus to anybody, except the boss of it? The public has only two eyes apiece, that's all--and even a man who squints can't see more than two rings at once, can he? And three rings don't give a real artist a show; they discourage him by distracting folk's attention away from him. How is he to do his best if he can't never be certain sure that the public is looking at him?"

Here again I was able to express my full agreement with the professor.

"I'd never do in a three-ring show, no matter what they was to give me,"

he continued. "And I've got an act nearly ready now that there's lots of these shows will be wanting just as soon as they hear of it. I"--here he interrupted himself and looked up and down the street, as though to make sure that there were no concealed listeners lying in wait to overhear what he was about to say--"I don't mind telling you about it, if you'd like to know."

I declared that I was much interested, and that I desired above all things to learn all about this new act of his.

"Well," he began, "I think I told you awhile ago that my granddaughter's all the family I got left now? She's nearly eight years old, and as cunning a little thing as ever you see anywhere--and healthy, too, like her mother. She favors me, just as her mother did. And she takes to music naturally--can't keep her hands off my instruments when I put them down--plays 'Jerusalem the Golden' on the pipes now so it would draw tears from a graven image. And she sings too--just as if she couldn't help it. She's a voice like an angel--oh, she'll be a primy donny one of these days. And it was her singing gave me the idea of this new act of mine. It's _Uncle Tom's Cabin_ arranged just for her and me. I do Uncle Tom and play the fiddle, and she doubles Little Eva and Topsy with a lightning change. As Little Eva, of course, she'll sing a hymn--'Wait Till the Clouds Roll By,' or the 'Sweet By-and-By,' or something of that sort; and as Topsy she'll do a banjo solo first, and then for the encore she'll do a song and dance, while I play the fiddle for her. It's a great scheme, isn't it? It's bound to be a go!"

I expressed the opinion that it seemed to me a most attractive suggestion.

"But I've made up my mind," he went on, "not to bring her out at all until I can get the right opening. I don't care about terms first off, because when we make our hit we can get our own terms quick enough. But there's everything in opening right. So I shall wait till fall, or maybe even till New Year's, before I begin to worry about it. And in the meantime my own act in the street goes. The Solo Orchestra is safe for pretty good money all summer. You didn't hear me the other evening, and I'm sorry--but there's no doubt it's a go. I don't suppose it's as legitimate as the tumbleronicon, maybe, or as the Swiss bells--I don't know for sure. But it isn't bad, either; and in summer, wherever there's children around, it's a certain winner. Sometimes when I do the 'Turkish Patrol,' or things like that, there's a hundred or more all round me."

"From the way the little ones looked at me the other evening, when I asked you to move on," I said, "it was obvious enough that they were very anxious to hear you. And I regret that I was forced to deprive myself also of the pleasure."

He rose to his feet slowly, his loose-jointed frame seeming to unfold itself link by link.

"I tell you what I'll do," he responded, cordially; "isn't your lady getting better?"

I was able to say that our invalid was improving steadily.

"Well, then," he suggested, "what do you say to my coming round here some evening next week? I'll give a concert for her and you, and any of your friends you like to invite? And you can tell her there isn't any of the new songs or waltzes or marches or selections from operas she wants I can't do. She's only got to give it a name and the Solo Orchestra will play it."

Of course I accepted this proffered entertainment; and with that Professor Briggs took his leave, bidding me farewell with a slightly conscious air as though he were accustomed to have the eyes of a mult.i.tude centred upon him.

And one evening, in the middle of the week, the Solo Orchestra appeared on the sidewalk in front of our house and gave a concert for our special benefit.

Our invalid had so far regained her strength that she was able to sit at the window to watch the performance of Professor Briggs. But her attention was soon distracted from the Solo Orchestra itself to the swarm of children which encompa.s.sed him about, and which took the sharpest interest in his strange performance.

"Just look at that lovely little girl on the stoop opposite, sitting all alone by herself, as though she didn't know any of the others," cried our convalescent. "She's the most elfinlike little beauty I've ever seen. And she is as _blasee_ about this Solo Orchestra of yours as though it was _Tannhauser_ we were listening to, and she was the owner of a box at the Metropolitan."

When the concert came to an end at last, as the brief twilight was waning, when the Solo Orchestra had played the "Anvil Chorus" as a final encore after the "Turkish Patrol," when Professor Theophilus Briggs, after taking up the collection himself, had shaken hands with me when I went down to convey to him our thanks, when it was so plainly evident that the performance was over at last that even the children accepted the inevitable and began to scatter--then the self-possessed little girl on the opposite side of the way rose to her feet with dignity. When the tall musician, with the bells jingling in his peaked hat, crossed the street, she took his hand as though he belonged to her. As he walked away she trotted along by his side, smiling up at him.

"I see now," I said; "that must be his granddaughter, the future impersonator of the great dual character, Little Eva and Topsy."

(1896.)

THE REHEARSAL OF THE NEW PLAY

When Wilson Carpenter came to the junction of the two great thoroughfares he stood still for a moment and looked at his watch, not wis.h.i.+ng to arrive at the rehearsal too early. He found that it was then almost eight o'clock, and he began at once to pick his way across the car-tracks that were here twisted in every direction. A cloud of steam swirled down as a train on the elevated railroad clattered along over his head; the Cyclops eye of a cable-car glared at him as it came rus.h.i.+ng down-town; from the steeple of a church on the corner, around which the mellow harvest-moon peered down on the noisy streets, there came the melodious call to the evening service; over the entrance to a variety show a block above a gaudy cl.u.s.ter of electric lights illuminated the posters which proclaimed for that evening a Grand Sacred Concert, at which Queenie Dougherty, the Irish Empress, would sing her new song, "He's an Illigant Man in a Sc.r.a.p, My Boys." As the young dramatist sped along he noted that people were still straggling by twos and threes into the house of wors.h.i.+p and into the place of entertainment; and he could not but contrast swiftly this Sunday evening in a great city with the Sunday evenings of his boyhood in the little village of his birth.

He wondered what his quiet parents would think of him now were they alive, and did they know that he was then going to the final rehearsal of a play of which he was half author. It was not his first piece, for he had been lucky enough the winter before to win a prize offered by an enterprising newspaper for the best one-act comedy; but it was the first play of his to be produced at an important New York house. When he came to the closed but brilliantly lighted entrance of this theatre, he stood still again to read with keen pleasure the three-sheet posters on each side of the doorway. These parti-colored advertis.e.m.e.nts announced the first appearance at that theatre of the young American actress, Miss Daisy Fostelle, in a new American comedy, "Touch and Go," written expressly for her by Harry Brackett and Wilson Carpenter, and produced under the immediate direction of Z. Kilburn.

When the author of the new American comedy had read this poster twice, he took out his watch again and saw that it was just eight. He threw away his cigarette and walked swiftly around the corner. Entering a small door, he went down a long, ill-lighted pa.s.sage. At the end of this was a small square hall, which might almost be called the landing-stage of a flight of stairs leading to the dressing-rooms above and to the property-room below. This hall was cut off from the stage by a large swinging-door.

As Carpenter entered the room this door swung open and a nervous young man rushed in. Catching sight of the dramatist, he checked his speed, held out his hand, and smiled wearily, saying, "That's you, is it? I'm so glad you've come!"

"The rehearsal hasn't begun, has it?" Carpenter asked, eagerly.

"Star isn't here yet," answered the actor, "and she's never in a hurry, you know. She takes her own time always, Daisy does. I know all her little tricks. I've told you already that I never would have accepted this engagement at all if I hadn't been out since January. I don't see myself in this part of yours. I'll do my best with it, of course, and it isn't such a bad part, maybe; but I don't see myself in it."

Carpenter tapped the other on the back heartily and cried: "Don't you be afraid, Dresser; you will be all right! Why, I shouldn't wonder if you made the hit of the whole piece!"

And with that he started to open the door that led to the stage.