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Page 76
Thus they get their chance. Amateur night is a kindly boon. It is
charity divested of almsgiving. It is a brotherly hand reached down by
members of the best united band of coworkers in the world to raise up
less fortunate ones without labelling them beggars. It gives you the
chance, if you can grasp it, to step for a few minutes before some badly
painted scenery and, during the playing by the orchestra of some ten or
twelve bars of music, and while the soles of your shoes may be clearly
holding to the uppers, to secure a salary equal to a Congressman's or
any orthodox minister's. Could an ambitious student of literature or
financial methods get a chance like that by spending twenty minutes in a
Carnegie library? I do not not trow so.
But shall we look in at Creary's? Let us say that the specific Friday
night had arrived on which the fortunate Mac McGowan was to justify the
flattering predictions of his distinguished patron and, incidentally,
drop his silver talent into the slit of the slot-machine of fame and
fortune that gives up reputation and dough. I offer, sure of your
acquiescence, that we now forswear hypocritical philosophy and bigoted
comment, permitting the story to finish itself in the dress of material
allegations--a medium more worthy, when held to the line, than the most
laborious creations of the word-milliners....
(Page of O. Henry's manuscript missing here.)
easily among the wings with his patron, the great Del Delano. For,
whatever footlights shone in the City-That-Would-Be-Amused, the freedom
of their unshaded side was Del's. And if he should take up an amateur--
see? and bring him around--see? and, winking one of his cold blue eyes,
say to the manager: "Take it from me--he's got the goods--see?" you
wouldn't expect that amateur to sit on an unpainted bench sudorifically
awaiting his turn, would you? So Mac strolled around largely with the
nonpareil; and the seven waited, clammily, on the bench.
A giant in shirt-sleeves, with a grim, kind face in which many stitches
had been taken by surgeons from time to time, i. e., with a long stick,
looped at the end. He was the man with the Hook. The manager, with his
close-smoothed blond hair, his one-sided smile, and his abnormally easy
manner, pored with patient condescension over the difficult program of
the amateurs. The last of the professional turns--the Grand March of the
Happy Huzzard--had been completed; the last wrinkle and darn of their
blue silkolene cotton tights had vanished from the stage. The man in the
orchestra who played the kettle-drum, cymbals, triangle, sandpaper,
whang-doodle, hoof-beats, and catcalls, and fired the pistol shots, had
wiped his brow. The illegal holiday of the Romans had arrived.
While the orchestra plays the famous waltz from "The Dismal Wife," let
us bestow two hundred words upon the psychology of the audience.
The orchestra floor was filled by People. The boxes contained Persons.
In the galleries was the Foreordained Verdict. The claque was there as
it had originated in the Stone Age and was afterward adapted by the
French. Every Micky and Maggie who sat upon Creary's amateur bench, wise
beyond their talents, knew that their success or doom lay already meted
out to them by that crowded, whistling, roaring mass of Romans in the
three galleries. They knew that the winning or the losing of the game
for each one lay in the strength of the "gang" aloft that could turn the
applause to its favorite. On a Broadway first night a wooer of fame may
win it from the ticket buyers over the heads of the cognoscenti. But not
so at Creary's. The amateur's fate is arithmetical. The number of his
supporting admirers present at his try-out decides it in advance. But
how these outlying Friday nights put to a certain shame the Mondays,
Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays, and matinees of the Broadway
stage you should know....
(Here the manuscript ends.)
ARISTOCRACY VERSUS HASH
[From THE ROLLING STONE.]
The snake reporter of The Rolling Stone was wandering up the avenue last
night on his way home from the Y.M.C.A. rooms when he was approached by
a gaunt, hungry-looking man with wild eyes and dishevelled hair. He
accosted the reporter in a hollow, weak voice.
"'Can you tell me, Sir, where I can find in this town a family of
scrubs?'
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