now the crowd was givin' 'em the ha-ha
until they'd got through.

Anyway, as a rib tickler that show was all to the good. The folks
nearly mobbed Pinckney, tellin' him what a case he was to think up such
an exhibition, and he laid it all to Sadie and me.

Only the duchess didn't exactly seem to connect with the joke. She sat
stolidly through the whole performance in a kind of a daze, and then
afterwards she says: "It wasn't what I'd call really clever, you know;
but, my word! the poor things tried hard enough."

Just before I starts for home I hunts up Leonidas. He was givin'
orders to his boss canvasman when I found him, and feelin' the pulse of
his one-lunger, that Mrs. Brassett's chauffeur had tinkered up.

"Well, Leonidas," says I, "are you goin' to put the Shakespeare-Sagawa
combination on the ten-twenty-thirt circuit?"

"Not if I can prove an alibi," says he. "I've just paid a week's
advance salary to that crowd of Melbas and Booths, and told 'em to go
sign contracts with Frohman and Hammerstein. I may be running a
medicine show, but I've got some professional pride left. Now I'm
going back to New York and engage an educated pig and a troupe of
trained dogs to fill out the season."

The last I saw of Montana Kate she was pacin' up and down the station
platform, readin' a copy of "Romeo and Juliet." Ain't they the
pippins, though?

VII

RINKEY AND THE PHONY LAMP

Say, for gettin' all the joy that's comin' to you, there's nothin' like
bein' a mixer. The man who travels in one class all the time misses a
lot. And I sure was mixin' it when I closes with Snick Butters and Sir
Hunter Twiggle all in the same day.

Snick had first place on the card. He drifts into the Studio early in
the forenoon, and when I sees the green patch over the left eye I knows
what's comin'. He's shy of a lamp on that side, you know--uses the
kind you buy at the store, when he's got it; and when he ain't got it,
he wants money.

I s'pose if I was wise I'd scratched Snick off my list long ago; but
knowin' him is one of the luxuries I've kept up. You know how it is
with them old time friends you've kind of outgrown but hate to chuck in
the discard, even when they work their touch as reg'lar as rent bills.

But Snick and me played on the same block when we was kids, and there
was a time when I looked for Snick to be boostin' me, 'stead of me
boostin' him. He's one of the near-smarts that you're always expectin'
t