Page:Once a Clown, Always a Clown.djvu/110

ONCE A CLOWN, ALWAYS A CLOWN car splatter a pompous stroller in morning clothes, a gardenia in his buttonhole and a silk hat on his head, and you shout with glee. It isn't the flivver being towed into the garage that brings the grin to your face, but the straight-eight that passed you so insolently on the hill ten miles back.

The actors and the newspapermen of New York once played a game of baseball at the old Polo Grounds as a benefit for Carl Rankin. I was at first for the actors. Leander Richardson, the critic, was at third for the journalists. There were few more striking figures on Broadway in his time than Leander, and he was not unaware of it. His magnificent red beard was enough to set him off in any crowd, and he dressed the part.

This afternoon he was charming, as the society reporters would say, in his red silken beard, a white silk shirt, a flowing tie of robin's-egg blue, a broad sash of the same hue and white flannel trousers. All afternoon he stood magnificently at third and waved his sultry beard and never a ball came his way.

Late in the game some one on our side hit a high foul, one of the highest fouls I ever saw. It lingered in the hands of the angels for a time,