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SHOWMAN
funds for a new church. The local parish priest was Father John Corbett, Jim's uncle, and the founder of the famous Irish Land League. It was like landing on another planet— I don't suppose Tuam sees one stranger a year even now. We must have been the biggest event in the town's history until the day when Amelia Earhart landed near there and gave them a new thrill. Three-quarters of the population didn't know a word of English— Gaelic was all they talked. We realized how little they knew of anything else when we heard that the week before we got there, a strolling company had done Dion Boucicault's Irish comedy, "The Shaugraun"— with Dan Lewis, an American negro actor playing the lead— and they'd stood for it. But they liked Corbett too. Our one performance took in enough to build a whole church big enough for Tuam. In Parliament shortly after, John Redmond, the great Irish statesman, said this action of the American champion's was one of the finest things he had ever heard of.
Being the manager of both Gentleman Jim and "Gentleman Jack" may have got in my way as a young fellow with Broadway ambitions. But it had its compensations, and not only financially. I lapped up being pointed out everywhere with: "That's Bill Brady, Corbett's handler." One evening in Canton, I remember, Corbett had been upstairs in the hotel having a chat with William McKinley, then governor of Ohio and a candidate for the presidency, and the pair of
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