oadway, and here, during the summer
months (1894-7) when the various theatrical road-companies, one of which
he was always a part, had returned for the closed season, he was to be
found aiding his concern in the reception and care of possible
applicants for songs and attracting by his personality such virtuosi of
the vaudeville and comedy stage as were likely to make the instrumental
publications of his firm a success.

I may as well say here that he had no more business skill than a fly. At
the same time, he was in no wise sycophantic where either wealth, power
or fame was concerned. He considered himself a personage of sorts, and
was. The minister, the moralist, the religionist, the narrow, dogmatic
and self-centered in any field were likely to be the butt of his humor,
and he could imitate so many phases of character so cleverly that he was
the life of any idle pleasure-seeking party anywhere. To this day I
recall his characterization of an old Irish washerwoman arguing; a
stout, truculent German laying down the law; lean, gloomy, out-at-elbows
actors of the Hamlet or classic school complaining of their fate; the
stingy skinflint haggling over a dollar, and always with a skill for
titillating the risibilities which is vivid to me even to this day.
Other butts of his humor were the actor, the Irish day-laborer, the
negro and the Hebrew. And how he could imitate them! It is useless to
try to indicate such things in writing, the facial expression, the
intonation, the gestures; these are not things of words. Perhaps I can
best indicate the direction of his mind, if not his manner, by the
following:

One night as we were on our way to a theater there stood on a nearby
corner in the cold a blind man singing and at the same time holding out
a little tin cup into which the coins of the charitably inclined were
supposed to be dropped. At once my brother noticed him, for he had an
eye for this sort of thing, the pathos of poverty as opposed to so gay a
scene, the street with its hurrying theater crowds. At the same time, so
inherently mischievous was his nature that although his sympathy for the
suffering or the ill-used of fate was overwhelming, he could not resist
combining his intended charity with a touch of the ridiculous.

"Got any pennies?" he demanded.

"Three or four."

Going over to an outdoor candystand he exchanged a quarter for pennies,
then came back and waited until the singer, who had ceased singing,
shou