Barnes stood uneasily by the desk. "I--I don't know, Tony," he answered.
"To tell yuh the truth, I'd be a little bit scared to try it. Yuh see,
I--well, if you wasn't an old friend of mine, I couldn't say it--but,
confidentially, Tony, I--I've kind o' lost my grip. I'm a--a back
number, Tony. I'm afraid o' them kids; they're too wise. My old act
wouldn't go." He waited, awkwardly; then, as if he hoped he were wrong,
he asked: "Would it?"

Sanderson snapped his grim eyes. "What're yuh tryin' to put it on fer,
at all, then--if yuh think it won't take with a gang of kids at a free
doin's?" Then his tone softened. "Look here, Harry. It'll only be ten or
twenty minutes. Go ahead. You'll get through all right. You ain't as
much of a dead one as you think you are."

Barnes straightened up. It was all right for him to make a slight
confession, but Sanderson had wounded his professional vanity. "A dead
one!" he exclaimed. "Certainly not. Harry Barnes a dead one! After a
thirty years' career in the companies of the best----"

The agent shoved a card in his hand and cut him off short. "Go around
there and tell 'em to put you down for a monologue." And Harry went,
with dignity and misgivings.

His misgivings were all the more increased when he saw the list of
promised performers: La Belle Marie, the famous little toe dancer in her
attractive transformations; the Brothers Zincatello, Risley experts at
the Hippodrome; Julian Jokes, "in his inimitable Hebrew monologue"; the
Seven Sebastians, the world's most marvelous Herculean acrobatic
performers; Mlle. Joujou, the popular singing comedienne, Prima Donna
and Star, direct from her unusual and most distinguished triumph at the
Palace Theater, London; and a dozen more of the younger and more popular
people of the stage, all adorned, with adjectives and hyperbole. Down at
the bottom of the list with a trembling pencil he wrote: "Harry Barnes,
Singing and Talking." Then he shook hands with the secretary of the
organization and walked back to his boarding-house in a mild fever of
excitement.

In his room he went eagerly about his work. He rehearsed again and again
his meager little bag of tricks, his funny Irishman, his Chinaman--no,
the Chinaman came first, because he used the queue afterward to wrap
around his chin and simulate Irish "galloways"--his Dutch comedian
monologue about married life, his old-time songs and dances. He
furbished up some old "patter" and injected new ane