Roamin’ in the gloamin’ (1928)

ROAMIN' IN THE GLOAMIN' 247 of the club and got on the stage almost half an hour late. Fortunately — as I imagined at the time — the manager had gone on and apologized for my absence on the plea that I had been engaged in a charity performance in a distant part of the city. But next morning the papers came out with a full report of the manager's remarks and, in another column, a story of how keenly interested Harry Lauder had been in the Driscoll-Hayes fight ! I tell you I had to suffer many leg-pulls about my interest in charity performances in Boston ! Jim Corbett I often met in different cities all over the States. The last time I saw Jim I had to congratulate him on the success of his reminiscences in the columns of the great periodical in which my own recollections have also appeared. "The Roar of the Crowd" certainly held my breathless attention for many weeks. I regard the story as a ring classic of the first water. Jim Corbett has always been in a class by himself both as a fighter and as a personality. Both Jim Jeffries and Jack Dempsey I have met in Los Angeles frequently, while dear old Bob Fitzsimmons first came into my ken by stepping on to a New York stage in my early days and handing me a decorated horse-shoe which he had forged himself and bearing a card on which were the words "From One Champ to Another !" In the dressing-room afterwards Bob gave an exhibition of the hit which floored Jim Corbett in their famous fight and he was so realistic that Tom pulled me away from the old fire-eater in dread that he would forget himself and imagine that I was his opponent of ten years before. When playing Los Angeles I have had the pleasure of seeing most of the world's cinema stars. My greatest friend in Hollywood is Charlie Chaplin. Every time I go there he and I foregather and many a crack and palaver we have about the old days when he was a comedian, like myself, on the British stage. Well do I remember Charlie (although I didn't