Page:Once a Clown, Always a Clown.djvu/252

ONCE A CLOWN, ALWAYS A CLOWN himself compelled to listen for three quarters of an hour to an introduction compounded of wind and fumbling flattery. When the chairman eventually reached, "The brilliant speaker of the evening now will give you his address", Mr. Lackaye arose, advanced to the front of the rostrum, and said, "My address is The Lambs Club." Whereupon he sat down.

Many a post-office, the appointment for which has prematurely grayed the hair of a congressman, handles less mail than is distributed at The Lambs. There is an array of lock boxes such as that of a small-town post-office lobby, the boxes often shared by two or more members, and a general delivery desk. The job keeps a postmaster and a young woman assistant busy eight hours a day, and is unique in its way, except for those remarkable post-offices maintained by the Billboard in Cincinnati, Chicago, New York, Kansas City and San Francisco for the convenience of the roving players of the out-of-doors show world.

In the club lobby stands a large board like a punched-out candy lottery with a hole and a peg for each of the sixteen hundred members. When a member enters the club he inserts a peg in the hole allotted to him, and he withdraws