Page:Once a Clown, Always a Clown.djvu/198

ONCE A CLOWN, ALWAYS A CLOWN told him. "It is a fundamental doctrine of the Western American that you are no better than he is. It is understood, of course, that he is no better than you."

"Oh, I quite understand," Tree reassured me, and he did, for the riders were offering him their makin's the third day. The Los Angeles reporters met him at the station and addressed him variously as "Sir," "Your Lordship" and "Sir Tree." One of them, sensible of the confusion, said, "May I ask just how you should be addressed?"

"My dear boy, call me Oscar," Tree told him in a stage whisper.

Another young man, who had been called in hurriedly from police headquarters to catch the distinguished visitor, asked him what he did when in London, and the actor replied that he played at His Majesty's Theater.

"I never knew the King had a theater," the police reporter exclaimed.

Tree passed triumphantly through the reception, but once in the motor car which whisked him to Hollywood he turned to his daughter, and said, "If I only could capture that type for the stage, our fortune would be made." He had the police reporter in mind.