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SHOWMAN
so you can all attend the matinee performance of 'The Two Orphans' at the Seattle Theater. He strongly recommends both cast and play." Then I moved to another corner and repeated. At the third corner the balloonist caught me red-handed and booted me off the lot— if he'd carried a gun, I wouldn't be here today —but the damage was done and the ascension was duly postponed for lack of audience. I lost my twenty-five dollars at faro late the same night, but it was a satisfaction to have earned it so brilliantly.
The company wardrobe included some convict suits of stripes and a couple of policemen's uniforms, which inspired me to work up a gag that became a standard item in our ballyhoo program. In each town I hired four loafers, two for convicts, two for policemen, and sent them streaking down the main street at just the right moment before the performance— the convicts running for dear life, the police after them with barking revolvers— only blanks, of course, but lots of noise. Everybody in town who wasn't bedridden would stampede along to see the fun. The convicts ducked into the theater-lobby, the police following, and, when the crowd arrived, I met them with a ten-minute salvo of spieling about the glories of our company and the beauties of that evening's bill. It always tickled them to have been so dramatically hoaxed, and business would be good.
There was some danger, of course, that an overexcited or conscientious westerner would unlimber
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