Page:Once a Clown, Always a Clown.djvu/272

ONCE A CLOWN, ALWAYS A CLOWN It is a perversity of human nature that vicissitude sometimes takes on the rose tints of romance when seen from afar. Men of my generation are accustomed to sighing like young lovers at memories of their boyhood and how they broke the ice in the water pitcher on winter mornings as a necessary prelude to washing their faces. There still are many places where Aurora can be greeted in this virile fashion. Sighing New Yorkers need not even leave their city. Let them turn off the steam in their Park Avenue apartments the next bitter night, raise all the windows, buy a pitcher and bowl from an antique dealer, and leave it on the window sill. They prefer the memory.

Frank Gillmore, executive secretary and treasurer of Equity, tells of such a reaction from a veteran trouper who went out last year with a company that stranded miserably in a small Pennsylvania town. The manager had posted a mandatory bond with Equity to cover such a contingency, of course. Equity now paid all obligations, sent the company tickets to New York and met their back salaries when they arrived.

"There's no romance or adventure in the theater these days," the veteran trouper