Page:Once a Clown, Always a Clown.djvu/106

ONCE A CLOWN, ALWAYS A CLOWN steps of Wallack's, directly across from the Western Union office next door to Daly's Theater. There had been a violent storm in lower New England during the night, the wires were down in the morning and no word came from Onset Bay.

I was sitting there when McCaull appeared about 9: 30. I told him the circumstances, "I can't commit this piece," I declared. "I can't call my name until I hear how the boy is."

"Surely, surely," he sympathized. "Forget all about it, my boy."

Near eleven o'clock two clerks dashed out the Broadway door of the telegraph office, shouting my name. The wire had come through and they had not waited to write it down. The crisis was safely passed. That twenty-months-old son is vice president of the United States Mortgage and Trust Company of New York to-day.

I burst into McCaull's office with the good word. When I had quieted down I recalled the clipping.

"I'll study it now," I told him. "Just give me the office to myself for a while." He did, and in less than an hour I had memorized a poem that requires five minutes and forty seconds to recite, as I have had many an opportunity to test.