nt of the principal players, a
few select friends, and a big bunch of newspaper scribes. On the stage,
mind you, not in the green-room, for the green-room is now a thing of
the past."

"Were you in the old Bowery shop then?" inquired Handy.

"Was I? What! Well, I should smile! You know me. Say, you may talk of
the realistic drama of these degenerate days--why, they aren't one, two,
nine with the shows of days gone by. Oh, you may laugh about stage
realism and chin about real race-horses in racing scenes, and real
society women to play real ladies, real burglars to crack unreal
property safes, and real prize-fighters to do their prize-fighting
fakes, in addition to attempting to act, but let me tell you fellows
that the managers who are gone never missed a trick when they had to do
a realistic stunt."

"Well, you ought to know, Smith," said Handy.

"Why, hang it, man alive! they did everything in the show business as
good then as they do now; and what's more, they didn't have to import
actors from abroad nor send over to the other side for stage managers to
teach the company how to act. Was I in the old Bowery in them days? Was
I? Sure, Mike! I went in there as a call-boy. Let me see--when? Oh, yes,
I remember. It was the season that 'The Cataract of the Ganges' was
brought out. Yes, sir, and they gave the 'Cataract' with real water,
too, and make no bloomin' error about it either!"

"Oh, come, come there, old man! Draw it mild. Don't pile it on too
thick," interposed the doubting Thomas of the party and the most
juvenile member of the troupe. "We can't stand all that. We are willing
to swallow the whisky in the green-room, but water on the stage--oh, no!
that's a little too much of a good thing. Why, my gentle romancer, the
Croton water pipes weren't laid in the city in them days. Then how the
mischief could they give the waterfall scene? With buckets, tubs, or
with a pump--which? or with all three combined?"

For a moment the speaker was nonplussed for an answer. He felt
embarrassed, and looked so. He was about to make reply when another of
the company who, by the way, was an old-timer like himself, boldly came
to the rescue.

"He's right," boldly asserted the new contributor to the conversation,
"dead right. I remember the stunt myself."

It may be as well to state that Smith's veracity about theatrical things
in general was not what it should be. His stories never could keep
companionship with truth. He had