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SHOWMAN
the doorman to open up. They started a rush— a rush that would have mashed me into mince-meat— but MacVeagh and Daly were a match for them and we got them sifted in by twos and threes until the seats on stage were full. Then I reminded the thousands of leftovers that their tickets had said ''first come first served' ' in big black letters, and wished them good night and better luck at the next performance. After contemplating the size and heft of MacVeagh and Daly, they let it go at that and went home. And I rushed on stage to instruct my thousand amateur supers in their duties as a fight crowd.
"This won't be an exhibition," I told them. "It's three-quarters of a real fight. I'm to be referee. Now, when my hand goes up— you yell— yell like blazes. When it goes down— stop." Just the same system they use nowadays with applause and laughter in broadcasting studios. I already had my sixty professional supers drilled in odd bits of naturalistic business, starting fights, making bets, bobbing up and down. Nobody knew who were the supers and who weren't, so the crowd was acting as natural as you please. Then I ran through the whole fight for them in dumb show, playing three roles at once— referee, Donaldson, Corbett, all at the same time— I was young then and could get away with things like that— and rehearsed the handsignals. But I held them in and didn't let them yellany stray crowd-noise was covered by the music out front between the acts.
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