Page:Hugh Pendexter--Tiberius Smith.djvu/15

 wires. And probably the slob element down there, known as the common people, have long since forgotten it.

"But the story of that glorious week should make brave reading, nevertheless, and the battle put up by the Green Mountain man and his corps of gayly clad sopranos and a light-brigade of giggling danseuses, reinforced by sad-voiced contraltos, an Alpine shepherd, a regulation pirate, and much green-room truck, incidentally demonstrates that art and science need not always stagger to the ropes because of ranting brute force.

"Tib—you know we called him Tib for short—had a way of making every one and every thing loyal to him. When his round, brown eyes concentrated in two beady twinkles, you had to believe in him and do his bidding. He believed in himself, and simply bubbled over with assurance when making the hardest shots imaginable. And he had the blamedest schemes. Yet, most of them pulled through in one way or another. If he didn't land what he was gunning for, he'd net something else almost as good. So when he decided to take a comic-opera troupe to Guatemala City, Mazie Adams side-stepped thirty per week in order to lead the ballet, and I was hypnotized to go as first tenor. There were twenty-eight of us all told, four men and two dozen women. Tiberius said he could