Page:Once a Clown, Always a Clown.djvu/117

Rh wearing rubbers crawling on a velvet carpet. He was rotten! One of my theater friends, who had only the haziest of ideas where he had been the night before, said to me the next day: "Will, I think it goes better that way."

I have had other jolts to my pride in my version of Casey. There are four poems that every parlor amateur, every village life of the party, includes in his repertoire. They are "Casey", Service's "The Shooting of Dan McGrew", and Kipling's "Boots" and "Gunga Din." They have written me letters about it and waylaid me at the stage door for years.

In the lobby of a Peoria, Illinois, hotel I once was accosted by a confident young man.

"Excuse me, Mr. Hopper, but I am going to see you to-night," he said, "and I just wondered if you are going to recite Casey."

I told him that it would be an evening to be remembered if I did not.

"Good," he exclaimed. "I would just like my young lady friend to hear how some one else recites it."

Every newspaper that has an Answers column or a poetry corner reprints Casey at as regular intervals as they serve up that other perennial, the United States Government's