and said I'd do. I had only one line to say. I was a prison warder on sentry duty, pacing to and fro between the walls at night, when Gilmour, the hero, escaping from his cell, knocks me down after a brief struggle, and disappears into the night. A moment later the alarm is given; other warders arrive, find me wounded on the ground and ask which way the prisoner has gone. "That way," I shout, pointing the direction before losing consciousness; whereupon the curtain falls.
It was not an exacting part. Gilmour said I should make a "bully warder." My own shabby clothes, with a brown billycock hat, would do as they were. I was to carry a large wooden pistol. We rehearsed the scene, swaying to and fro, breathing hard, grunting with effort, cursing each other fiercely, until the prisoner, wrenching the pistol from me, struck me on the head and floored me. Such was my rôle.
I played it at Yonkers and Mount Vernon, three nights in each place, if memory serves me correctly, but "went through it" is the true description of my performance. For the theatre, either as a writer or actor, I possess no trace of talent, a fact rediscovered recently when playing an insignificant part in Drinkwater's "Oliver Cromwell" on tour with Henry Ainley. My dismissal at the end of the first week, however, was not due to this lack of skill--it was due to a pail of beer and the leading lady. For the leading lady, handsome daughter, I remember, of a Washington General, was the inspiration of the touring company, and it was for her beaux yeux that the enterprise was undertaken. Gilmour was what is known as "crazy" about her, his jealousy a standing joke among us, so that when those beaux yeux were turned upon my lanky, half-starved self, there were warnings that trouble might begin. But I was looking for salary and food rather than for trouble. In the dressing-room we underlings all shared together, though "dressing" was of negligible kind, I was quite safe. Chance meetings, however, were unavoidable, of course, and Bettina's instinct for adventure
was distinctly careless. It was here the pail of beer came
