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.
W. C. Fields
Mullett, in the middle 1920s, "You see, although my specialty was juggling, I used it only as a means to an end. I didn't just stand up and toss balls, knives, plates, and clubs. I invented little acts, which would seem like episodes out of real life; and I used my juggling to furnish the comedy element.
"Somehow, even though I was only a kid, I had sense enough to know that I must work my mind and not just my hands. If I hadn't realized that, I'd be laid on the shelf today. People would be saying, 'Bill Fields? Oh, yes! he used to be a juggler, didn't he?' "
Although his role as all-around understudy was ended, Fields sometimes took part in burlesque skits involving several comedians. Fulton's "burlesque" was unlike the burlesque of later years ; more properly, his unit could have been called a repertory company. Its usual presentation was an ordinary two or three-act play, one of the damp, anguished melodramas then in flower. Between acts, Fields did his specialties. As a change of pace Fulton on some nights gave a series of comic skits, out of which general entertainment grew the muscular, ribald burlesque of today. For the most part, his players were quiet and well-behaved. Fields' personal life in this time of his eighteenth year alternated between sequestration and public expansiveness, the latter usually accompanied by beer. From taking a glass of beer as an excuse to gorge on free lunch, he had grown fond of an occasional session during which he drank quite a few glasses in a row and eschewed the food. Fields was to know stretches late in life when he insisted on eschewing food thoroughly ; he sometimes eschewed it for days on end. With Fulton, he either sat in his room and read books or repaired to a saloon and foregathered with the local bloods. If the troupe had a rosy, accommodating ingenue, Fields also devoted many evenings to dalliance ; he was fond of girls and was, in turn, popular with them, although they often complained bit
56