Gullible's Travels (1917). Lardner Ring
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So the lady begin lookin’ all over for it and Hatch was goin’ to give it back because he thought it was a shoe catalogue, but he happened to see at the top of it where it says “Price 25 Cents,” so he tossed it in his lap and stuck his hat over it. And the lady kept lookin’ and lookin’ and finally she turned round and looked Hatch right in the eye, but he dropped down inside his collar and left her wear herself out. So when she’d gave up I says somethin’ about I’d like to have a drink.
“Let’s go,” says Hatch.
“No,” I says. “I don’t want it bad enough to go back to town after it. I thought maybe we could get it sent up to the room.”
“I’m goin’ alone then,” says Hatch.
“You’re liable to miss the second act,” I says.
“I’d never miss it,” says Hatch.
“All right,” says I. “I hope you have good weather.”
So he slipped me the book to keep for him and beat it. So I seen the lady had forgot us, and I opened up the book and that’s how I come to find out what the show was about. I read her all through, the part that was in English, before the curtain went up again, so when the second act begin I knowed what had came off and what was comin’ off, and Hatch and Mrs. Hatch hadn’t no idear if the show was comical or dry. My Missus hadn’t, neither, till we got home and I told her the plot.
Carmen ain’t no regular musical show where a couple o’ Yids comes out and pulls a few lines o’ dialogue and then a girl and a he-flirt sings a song that ain’t got nothin’ to do with it. Carmen’s a regular play, only instead o’ them sayin’ the lines, they sing them, and in for’n languages so’s the actors can pick up some loose change offen the sale o’ the liberettos. The music was wrote by George S. Busy, and it must of kept him that way about two mont’s. The words was either throwed together by the stage carpenter or else took down by a stenographer outdoors durin’ a drizzle. Anyway, they ain’t nobody claims them. Every oncet in three or four pages they forget themself and rhyme. You got to read each verse over two or three times before you learn what they’re hintin’ at, but the management gives you plenty o’ time to do it between acts and still sneak a couple o’ hours’ sleep.
The first act opens up somewheres in Spain, about the corner o’ Chicago Avenue and Wells. On one side o’ the stage they’s a pill mill where the employees is all girls, or was girls a few years ago. On the other side they’s a soldiers’ garage where they keep the militia in case of a strike. In the back o’ the stage they’s a bridge, but it ain’t over no water or no railroad tracks or nothin’. It’s prob’ly somethin’ the cat dragged in.
Well, the soldiers stands out in front o’ the garage hittin’ up some barber shops, and pretty soon a girl blows in from the hero’s home town, Janesville or somewheres. She runs a few steps every little w’ile and then stops, like the rails was slippery. The soldiers sings at her and she tells them she’s came to look for Don Joss that run the chop-suey dump up to Janesville, but when they shet down on him servin’ beer he quit and joined the army. So the soldiers never heard o’ the bird, but they all ask her if they won’t do just as good, but she says nothin’ doin’ and skids off the stage. She ain’t no sooner gone when the Chinaman from Janesville and some more soldiers and some alley rats comes in to help out the singin’. The book says that this new gang o’ soldiers was sent on to relieve the others, but if anything happened to wear out the first ones it must of took place at rehearsal. Well, one o’ the boys tells Joss about the girl askin’ for him and he says: “Oh, yes; that must be the little Michaels girl from up in Wisconsin.”
So pretty soon the whistle blows for noon and the girls comes out o’ the pill mill smokin’ up the mornin’ receipts and a crowd o’ the unemployed comes in to shoot the snipes. So the soldiers notices that Genevieve Farr’r ain’t on yet, so they ask where she’s at, and that’s her cue. She puts on a song number and a Spanish dance, and then she slips her bouquet to the Chink, though he ain’t sang a note since the whistle blowed. But now it’s one o’clock and Genevieve and the rest o’ the girls beats it back to the coffin factory and the vags chases down to the Loop to get the last home edition and look at the want ads to see if they’s any jobs open with fair pay and nothin’ to do. And the soldiers mosey into the garage for a well-earned rest and that leaves Don all alone on the stage.
But he ain’t no more than started on his next song when back comes the Michaels girl. It oozes out here that she’s in love with the Joss party, but she stalls and pretends like his mother’d sent her to get the receipt for makin’ eggs fo yung. And she says his mother ast her to kiss him and she slips him a dime, so he leaves her kiss him on the scalp and he asks her if she can stay in town that evenin’ and see a nickel show, but they’s a important meetin’ o’ the Maccabees at Janesville that night, so away she goes to catch the two-ten and Don starts in on another song number, but the rest o’ the company don’t like his stuff and he ain’t hardly past the vamp when they’s a riot.
It seems like Genevieve and one o’ the chorus girls has quarreled over a second-hand stick o’ gum and the chorus girl got the gum, but Genevieve relieved her of part of a earlobe, so they pinch Genevieve and leave Joss to watch her till the wagon comes, but the wagon’s went out to the night desk sergeant’s house with a case o’ quarts and before it gets round to pick up Genevieve she’s bunked the Chink into settin’ her free. So she makes a getaway, tellin’ Don to meet her later on at Lily and Pat’s place acrost the Indiana line. So that winds up the first act.
Well, the next act’s out to Lily and Pat’s, and it ain’t no Y.M.C.A. headquarters, but it’s a hang-out for dips and policemans. They’s a cabaret and Genevieve’s one o’ the performers, but she forgets the words to her first song and winds up with tra-la-la, and she could of forgot the whole song as far as I’m concerned, because it wasn’t nothin’ you’d want to buy and take along home.
Finally Pat comes in and says it’s one o’clock and he’s got to close up, but they won’t none o’ them make a move, and pretty soon they’s a live one blows into the joint and he’s Eskimo Bill, one o’ the butchers out to the Yards. He’s got paid that day and he ain’t never goin’ home. He sings a song and it’s the hit o’ the show. Then he buys a drink and starts flirtin’ with Genevieve, but Pat chases everybody but the performers and a couple o’ dips that ain’t got nowheres else to sleep. The dips or stick-up guys, or whatever they are, tries to get Genevieve to go along with them in the car w’ile they pull off somethin’, but she’s still expectin’ the Chinaman. So they pass her up and blow, and along comes Don and she lets him in, and it seems like he’d been in jail for two mont’s, or ever since the end o’ the first act. So he asks her how everything has been goin’ down to the pill mill and she tells him that she’s quit and became a entertainer. So he says, “What can you do?” And she beats time with a pair o’ chopsticks and dances the Chinese Blues.
After a w’ile they’s a bugle call somewhere outdoors and Don says that means he’s got to go back to the garage. So she gets sore and tries to bean him with a Spanish onion. Then he reaches inside his coat and pulls out the bouquet she give him in Atto First to show her he ain’t changed his clo’es, and then the sheriff comes in and tries to coax him with a razor to go back to his job. They fight like it was the first time either o’ them ever tried it and the sheriff’s leadin’ on points when Genevieve hollers for the dips, who dashes in with their gats pulled and it’s good night, Mister Sheriff! They put him in moth balls and they ask Joss to join their tong. He says all right and they’re all pretty well lit by this time and they’ve reached the singin’ stage, and Pat can’t get them to go home and he’s scared some o’ the Hammond people’ll put in a complaint, so he has the curtain rang down.
Then they’s a relapse of it don’t say how long, and Don and Genevieve and the yeggs and their lady friends is all out in the country somewheres attendin’ a Bohunk Sokol Verein picnic and Don starts whinin’ about his old lady that he’d left up to Janesville.
“I wisht I was back there,” he says.
“You