Page:Once a Clown, Always a Clown.djvu/170

ONCE A CLOWN, ALWAYS A CLOWN first performance; or wicked manager will take it away from you. Then once you have delivered it, the country will ring with my darling's name."

The child, thoroughly persuaded that she was the victim of the manager's jealous dislike, rehearsed in private the line James had given her. Just previous to Metamora's first entrance his Indian mother wonders what was become of him.

Forrest strode on the stage, a superb physical picture, and his mother, with a cry of welcome, asked, "Where have you been, my Metamora?"

"Out slaying the paleface!" rumbled Forrest in his deepest bass tones.

The child had no response at this point, but up she piped in a thin treble the line that Papa Louis had taught her: "When snow comes I'm going sleighing too."

History does not record the fate of that aspiring but misguided young actress.

James was just as ready to make a performance of his own ridiculous. He was playing Virginius, another popular set piece of the grandiloquent school, with his own company one season and had with him as property man, Jimmy