Page:Once a Clown, Always a Clown.djvu/226

ONCE A CLOWN, ALWAYS A CLOWN funereal figure, his jowls deep purple with a three-day beard, a worn silk hat on his long, dark locks, and a hand thrust into the folds of a frock coat greening with age. He was the tragedian, the melancholy Dane. "Beans", his inseparable associate in misfortune, was the low comedian, a squat person also in high hat and frock coat, but with a fulsomely flowered vest. The two usually were depicted as stranded on a baggage truck at a village depot, or as walking the railroad tracks, their effects carried in bandanna handkerchiefs from the ends of sticks over their shoulders. The reading matter beneath the sketch sometimes ran this way:

Ham: My friend, the Duke of Mixture, is the best dressed chap in London. He has so many ties that he can't count them.

Beans: Then he ought to hire us.

The picture was not all libel. Booth had seen the American actor lounging in Union Square, mingling only with his own kind and handicapped very often in competition with British actors by lack of equal social graces and cultural background, and had given his home and founded The Players to augment both their comfort and their dignity. Here was a place where the younger American actor might make