Page:Once a Clown, Always a Clown.djvu/101

Rh "The outlook wasn't brilliant for the Mudville nine that day."

For thirty-seven years I have been doing it. The actual number of times is a problem for one of those laid-end-to-end statisticians. Where or what I may be playing, I must, before the evening is out, come before the curtain and pitch to Casey. If there is a benefit my contribution, it is understood, is Casey; a banquet, no other eloquence than Casey is expected of me. Long ago the repetition became so mechanical that I found it difficult to keep my mind on the task. In the midst of it I would find myself still declaiming, but my mind far from the theater or studying some face in the house. I have discovered that I can force my attention from straying only by recalling the hundred variations of emphasis with which I have experimented from time to time. Casey has so dogged my steps, indeed, that it has been suggested that I change the final stanza to:

Oh, somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright; The band is playing somewhere and somewhere hearts are light;