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SHOWMAN
hardly do for the citizenry of Moscow to appear in it.
"And why not?" he says, ruffling up like a he turkey. "Well go on as we are, me fine bucko, or we won't go on at all. D'ye hear?" Then he turned to his men: "Attention!" he says. "Shoulder arms!" and off they marched leaving the Czar of Russia bereft of subjects, rebels, enemies and soldiers all at once.
The house was packed and, if the performance was canceled, we were going to lose our only chance at making any money that season. I shed my royal robes and rushed out into the street. Portland streets were always full of loafers, and the loafers were extremely willing to make fifty cents as impromptu actors. In half an hour I'd collected sixty heterogeneous supers from bar-rooms and street corners and, while the audience waited— very patiently I must say— we rushed them through a vague rehearsal. They got the idea at once and made as good a mob as you could find right off the reel, putting the noses of the Emmet Guards completely out of joint. They weren't all sober, but that only added a dash of fire to their performance.
The house was expecting big things, but, when we brought on our solitary horse— Portland had never seen a horse on the stage before— they went wild. He was not a professional stage-horse, just a mild-mannered and elderly steed we'd hired from the livery-stable, and the burst of applause he got startled him considerably. As the roar continued he stopped dead in the middle of the stage, with the Captain of the Czar's guard, who
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