layed the principal part but a merciful
Providence gave me a cold in the head so I couldn't hear what she
said! _Voila! tout fromage de Brie_! To my mind Tottie looked
like one of yesterday's ham sandwiches, and a 'gent' sitting near
me said she was all to the mustard, so you see great minds run in
the same channel--oh! la, la, la! But to return to our muttons.
The show is said to have cost $25,000, but what care I? _Voila!
tout coalscuttle_! I'd roast it if it cost $50,000, otherwise how
could I make good? _Voila! tout blatherskite_! But to return to
our muttons. I went out after the first act and never did go
back--great joke on the show, wasn't it? Oh! la, la, la! Still I
insist that Tottie Coughdrop looked like a ham sandwich. _Voila!
tout fudge_!"

"So that's the kind of piffle that managers and actors have to go
up against," laughed Bunch.

"They don't go up against it any more, Bunch," I said. "They are
shifty young guys in the theatrical business nowadays, and they
sidestep the hammer-throwers. Mr. Stale is a back number, and his
harpoon can't stop a dollar bill from flutering into any man's box
office."

"He thinks he can, all right," Bunch muttered.

"Well, there are two thinks and a half still due him," I said.
"Who ever gave that guy a license to splash ink all over a
production and hold actors, authors and managers up to ridicule?
Did you ever hear of an actor or an author or a manager getting out
a three-sheet which held a newspaper up to ridicule?"

"Not on your endowment policy," Bunch chimed in.

"Well, isn't a newspaper just as much of a public institution as a
theatre? Suppose a manager were to call in a rubberneck, hand him
a tool box and send him to a newspaper office to look for a splashy
production on a busy night. Suppose, further, that after the paper
went to press Mr. Rubberneck opened up his tool box and began to
pound on the leading man in the print shop for having a bunch of
bad grammar in his editorial column, and after that, suppose our
friend with the glistening eyes jumped on one of the sub-editors
because the woman's page was out of alignment, or made a rave
because the jokes in the funny column were all to the ancient, what
would happen to Mr. Rubberneck, eh, what? Sixteen editors,
fourteen reporters and twenty-three linotype men would take a
running kick at old Buttinski, and there wouldn't be enough of him
left to give the coroner an excuse to look solemn."