Page:Once a Clown, Always a Clown.djvu/234

ONCE A CLOWN, ALWAYS A CLOWN broached the plan of an annual All Star Gambol Tour of the larger cities. Nat Goodwin was the first to volunteer, and William H. Crane, Stuart Robson, Wilton Lackaye, Henry M. Woodruff, Clay Greene, T. Daniel Frawley, E. W. Kemble, Joseph Holland, Fritz Williams, Vincent Serrano, Charles Klein, Burr McIntosh, Chauncey Olcott, George Barnum, E. J. Kellard, Jefferson de Angelis, Alfred Klein, Digby Bell and myself were among the members who followed his lead. We opened at the Metropolitan Opera House, May 24, 1898, in the midst of the Spanish-American War to a gala audience, and set out by special train with Boston our first stop. There was a minstrel first part, with myself as interlocutor, and in every city we paraded minstrel fashion in frock coats and high hats, headed by a band of fifty led by the late Victor Herbert.

The net proceeds of the week's tour was sixty-two thousand dollars, sufficient to pay off both mortgages on the new club, all other debts and leave a little in the treasury. The tour became an annual event and accumulated a surplus so rapidly that we bought the site, built our present home and occupied it in 1905. Ten years later we doubled the building.