We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
SHOWMAN
hotel set us up to free supper and we just sat and ate, chorus and all, and talked glumly against the silence. It was the same everywhere else that night, they said. Chicago was in mourning.
After that tragedy, of course, the American theater had to do what it should have done long before it had such a grisly warning— install asbestos curtains and doors that open outward and put firemen on the premises during all performances. For years afterward, however, the Iroquois hung on as a grim and abandoned reminder— shunned and talked about in whispers like a haunted house. Visitors to Chicago were always taken to peer at its empty hulk as one of the sights of the city. Again and again they tried to open it for business, hoping that the curse had worn off. First-rate drama failed there, second-rate drama failed, vaudeville failed— and yet it was probably the handsomest and best-designed house in town. Finally, the Freemasons bought it for the site and tore the ill-omened building down.
All that is way back when, of course. But I'm not going to try to bridge the gap between then and now, for the gap represents thirty-odd years with their own set of ups and downs and fun and games. There are more tales in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamed of in the modern generation's philosophy, and some day they'll get their telling. I should, however, like to spin a yarn or two about the beginnings of famous names and events that even the youngsters will recognize.
259