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Actorviews
Bert Williams came back to listen to trouble, which seems to gravitate to him as naturally as a penny to a slot. Somebody had been doing wrong again to “Broadway Brevities,” poor thing ! and as ever Bert Williams was shouldering the black man’s burden. A couple of minor comedians had “jumped the show,” as the phrase is, taking with them the orchestra parts of the number that opened the second act. The leader, the stage manager, everybody was in a fume. They described the dirty trick with language in kind but inadequate — but I didn’t know it was inadequate till Bert Williams summed the atrocity in a single word, deep from his diapason :
“Sabotage!”
He sat loose while Mr. Chappy rerobed him for his next appearance — in the ancient dress-suit and white cotton gloves and too small silk hat.
I think he stood up to change his pants ; but I am not sure. I know he sat there, loose, jointless, wordless, while Mr. Chappy handed him his kinky wig and some prepared cork with which to blacken a light lemon-colored line on his forehead that showed below the wig.
The coat of this disreputable dress-suit is green from age. The pants are black only where they have been patched; the chassis of them is in hue a stale heliotrope. When I first saw those heliotrope pants — and they were veterans then — we had not been at war with Spain.
“Same pants, Brother Williams,” said I, in whom the habit of conversation is incurable.
“Same,” he assented, and, marvelously enough went on : “Same pants in which I appeared before the crowned heads of Europe.”