Page:Once a Clown, Always a Clown.djvu/243

Rh face, drew back with a gasp and exclaimed the only three words of the play "The wrong flat!"

In the humane régime of Warden Osborne at Sing Sing, eighty of us once went to Ossining and gave two performances of current Gambol material. Every man in the prison except those in the Death House and the hospital attended, in two bodies of eight hundred each. What I saw there left an abiding impression on me, and a conviction that it is better to err on the side of humanity rather than brutality in enforcing society's penalties on the criminal.

As I looked through the peephole in the curtain of the prison stage my eye was caught by one face in particular in that strange audience. It was a Brutus-like face, the seeming epitome of honor, and I marked the man well and struck up a brief acquaintance when the first performance ended and the audience filed out to make way for the second section.

"I hope you liked it," I said to the prisoner.

"It was splendid," he said. "Broadway couldn't see that show, I imagine; no manager could pay that salary list."

"I wish you would tell me what act most appealed to you," I asked. "Your reaction would be helpful in pointing the second show."