Gullible's Travels (1917). Lardner Ring
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singin’ all the w’ile to bother each other, but finally the fellas that’s runnin’ the picnic says it’s time for the fat man’s one-legged race and everybody goes offen the stage. So the Michaels girl comes on and is gettin’ by pretty good with a song when she’s scared by the noise o’ the gun that’s fired to start the race for the bay-window championship. So she trips back to her dressin’-room and then Don and Eskimo Bill put on a little slap-stick stuff.
When they first meet they’re pals, but as soon as they get wise that the both o’ them’s bugs over the same girl their relations to’rds each other becomes strange. Here’s the talk they spill:
“Where do you tend bar?” says Don.
“You got me guessed wrong,” says Bill. “I work out to the Yards.”
“Got anything on the hip?” says Don.
“You took the words out o’ my mouth,” says Bill. “I’m drier than St. Petersgrad.”
“Stick round a w’ile and maybe we can scare up somethin’,” says Don.
“I’ll stick all right,” says Bill. “They’s a Jane in your party that’s knocked me dead.”
“What’s her name?” says Don.
“Carmen,” says Bill, Carmen bein’ the girl’s name in the show that Genevieve was takin’ that part.
“Carmen!” says Joss. “Get offen that stuff! I and Carmen’s just like two pavin’ bricks.”
“I should worry!” says Bill. “I ain’t goin’ to run away from no rat-eater.”
“You’re a rat-eater yourself, you rat-eater!” says Don.
“I’ll rat-eat you!” says Bill.
And they go to it with a carvin’ set, but they couldn’t neither one o’ them handle their utensils.
Don may of been all right slicin’ toadstools for the suey and Bill prob’ly could of massacreed a flock o’ sheep with one stab, but they was all up in the air when it come to stickin’ each other. They’d of did it better with dice.
Pretty soon the other actors can’t stand it no longer and they come on yellin’ “Fake!” So Don and Bill fold up their razors and Bill invites the whole bunch to come out and go through the Yards some mornin’ and then he beats it, and the Michaels girl ain’t did nothin’ for fifteen minutes, so the management shoots her out for another song and she sings to Don about how he should ought to go home on account of his old lady bein’ sick, so he asks Genevieve if she cares if he goes back to Janesville.
“Sure, I care,” says Genevieve. “Go ahead!”
So the act winds up with everybody satisfied.
The last act’s outside the Yards on the Halsted Street end. Bill’s ast the entire company to come in and watch him croak a steer. The scene opens up with the crowd buyin’ perfume and smellin’ salts from the guys that’s got the concessions. Pretty soon Eskimo Bill and Carmen drive in, all dressed up like a horse. Don’s came in from Wisconsin and is hidin’ in the bunch. He’s sore at Carmen for not meetin’ him on the Elevated platform.
He lays low till everybody’s went inside, only Carmen. Then he braces her. He tells her his old lady’s died and left him the laundry, and he wants her to go in with him and do the ironin’.
“Not me!” she says.
“What do you mean—’Not me’?” says Don.
“I and Bill’s goin’ to run a kosher market,” she says.
Just about now you can hear noises behind the scenes like the cattle’s gettin’ theirs, so Carmen don’t want to miss none of it, so she makes a break for the gate.
“Where you goin’?” says Joss.
“I want to see the butcherin’,” she says.
“Stick round and I’ll show you how it’s done,” says Joss.
So he pulls his knife and makes a pass at her, just foolin’. He misses her as far as from here to Des Moines. But she don’t know he’s kiddin’ and she’s scared to death. Yes, sir, she topples over as dead as the Federal League.
It was prob’ly her heart.
So now the whole crowd comes dashin’ out because they’s been a report that the place is infested with the hoof and mouth disease. They tell Don about it, but he’s all excited over Carmen dyin’. He’s delirious and gets himself mixed up with a Irish policeman.
“I yield me prisoner,” he says.
Then the house doctor says the curtain’s got to come down to prevent the epidemic from spreadin’ to the audience. So the show’s over and the company’s quarantined.
Well, Hatch was out all durin’ the second act and part o’ the third, and when he finally come back he didn’t have to tell nobody where he’d been. And he dozed off the minute he hit his seat. I was for lettin’ him sleep so’s the rest o’ the audience’d think we had one o’ the op’ra bass singers in our party. But Mrs. Hatch wasn’t lookin’ for no publicity, on account of her costume, so she reached over and prodded him with a hatpin every time he begin a new aria.
Goin’ out, I says to him:
“How’d you like it?”
“Pretty good,” he says, “only they was too much gin in the last one.”
“I mean the op’ra,” I says.
“Don’t ask him!” says Mrs. Hatch. “He didn’t hear half of it and he didn’t understand none of it.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” says I. “Jim here ain’t no boob, and they wasn’t nothin’ hard about it to understand.”
“Not if you know the plot,” says Mrs. Hatch.
“And somethin’ about music,” says my Missus.
“And got a little knowledge o’ French,” says Mrs. Hatch.
“Was that French they was singin’?” says Hatch. “I thought it was Wop or ostrich.”
“That shows you up,” says his Frau.
Well, when we got on the car for home they wasn’t only one vacant seat and, o’ course, Hatch had to have that. So I and my Missus and Mrs. Hatch clubbed together on the straps and I got a earful o’ the real dope.
“What do you think o’ Farr’r’s costumes?” says Mrs. Hatch.
“Heavenly!” says my Missus. “Specially the one in the second act. It was all colors o’ the rainbow.”
“Hatch is right in style then,” I says.
“And her actin’ is perfect,” says Mrs. Hatch.
“Her voice too,” says the Wife.
“I liked her actin’ better,” says Mrs. H. “I thought her voice yodeled in the up-stairs registers.”
“What do you suppose killed her?” I says.
“She was stabbed by her lover,” says the Missus.
“You wasn’t lookin’,” I says. “He never touched her. It was prob’ly tobacco heart.”
“He stabs her in the book,” says Mrs. Hatch.
“It never went through the bindin’,” I says.
“And wasn’t Mooratory grand?” says the Wife.
“Splendid!” says Mrs. Hatch. “His actin’ and singin’ was both grand.”
“I preferred his actin’,” I says. “I thought his voice hissed in the down-stairs