Page:Once a Clown, Always a Clown.djvu/38

ONCE A CLOWN, ALWAYS A CLOWN season of "One Hundred Wives" and found us in Mississippi. Out of some experience with Chambers of Commerce and local pride, I refrain from naming the city even after fortyfive years. The real celebration would come on Sunday, but preparation had begun early. I do not care to say that there was no sober citizen in the town on Saturday, but I speak advisedly when I say that he was not visible. The baggage-wagon driver and the entire stage and house crew were missing. Fortunately we carried our own stage carpenter. He and the rest of us trucked our trunks and enough of the scenery to set the stage from the station, set it up, took it down, hauled it back to the station, loaded it into the baggage car, lighted the kerosene footlights, manned the box office, the curtain rope, the props and ushered.

Matinées in the South in those days were played at noon. At twelve o'clock when not a five-cent piece had been offered at the box office, we hastily printed a sign on a strip of canvas to the effect that the performance had been postponed until one, found a darky still able to walk, gave him a dinner bell and sent him through the business streets, carrying the banner and ringing the bell.