FIREMAN, SAVE MY CHILD
A comic opera company was playing Moose Jaw, Canada. I don"t have to say what kind of a company it was. The fact that they were playing Moose Jaw is enough.
(And by the way, who knows how that town got its name? And a bright little boy at the foot of the cla.s.s held up his hand and said--"I know!" And the teacher said, "All right, Willie, you may tell us how Moose Jaw got its name." And Willie said--"It is derived from an Indian expression which means, "The-Place-Where-the-Man-Fixed-the-Wagon-With-a-Moose"s-Jaw-Bone."")
There was no regular theater there, so the company appeared in the fire station. The engines were run out in the street and the show was given there. There were big corridors on the second and third floors where the firemen slept; there was a bra.s.s rod running down from the upper to the lower floor for the firemen to slide down in case of a fire. The firemen all slept up on the third floor this night, giving the second floor up to the ladies for a dressing room.
It was at the end of the first act. The girls were changing for the second act. The change was complete; tights and all. And an alarm was rung in. B-r-r-r-r!! went the big gong downstairs. And swish! swish!
went the red-shirted firemen down the pole. The girls thought the firehouse itself was afire and ran shrieking around the room begging to be saved.
There were eighteen firemen upstairs that night and only two of them got to the fire.
On the stage of the Orpheum Theater in Montreal hangs this sign:
+-------------------------------+ |WHERE THERE"S SMOKE THERE"S | |FIRE. YOU DO THE SMOKING AND | |I"LL DO THE FIREING. MANAGER. | +-------------------------------+
I came near leaving the stage while playing in Montreal and going into the portering business; said change being suggested by the following advertis.e.m.e.nt in the _Montreal Star_:
"Wanted: A porter to drive bus and a dining room girl."
GOT ANY EXPERIENCED BABIES?
Wanted: Nursing; experienced babies. 10X Globe Office.--(_Toronto Globe._)
PLAYING THE ENGLISH MUSIC HALLS
An American talking act going over to England to play has got a big job on hand. The trouble is going to come from a totally unexpected source too. It is because we do not speak the language. We say that we speak English; but we don"t; that is, mighty little of it. We speak mostly plain, unadulterated, United States language, which is very different from English. So when we go over there, in addition to talking about things that they do not understand, we are also using a language that they don"t know.
For instance: We opened up in Manchester with a play called _The Wyoming Whoop_. Now out of that t.i.tle they understood just one word--"The." They did not know whether "Wyoming" was a battleship or some patent skin food. And "Whoop" was still worse.
During the progress of the play one of the characters speaks of having left the day"s ice on the steps all the forenoon; I say--
"Has that piece of ice been out in that Wyoming sun all the forenoon?"
"Yes, sir."
"Well, you take a sponge and go out and get it."
After two or three shows the manager came to me and asked me what that line about the ice meant; was it supposed to be funny? I told him it was in America. He wanted to know why.
"Well," I said, "you know Wyoming is the hottest place in America, don"t you?"
"No; is it?"
"Well then, you know that if you left a piece of ice out in the sun all the forenoon it would melt, don"t you?"
"No; would it?"
Upon investigation I found that there was probably not one person in ten thousand in those manufacturing towns of England who ever saw a piece of ice. They didn"t know but that you could bake it.
It took me only three days to discover that I was in wrong with _The Wyoming Whoop_. So the next week in Liverpool I switched to _Bill Biffin"s Baby_. Now we were on the right track. We had a subject, Babies, that they understood and liked. But on the second show I began writing it over--into the English language. I found that in twenty-four minutes I was using thirty-two words that they either knew nothing of, or else meant something entirely different from what I intended they should.
For instance: Take the words Trolley Car. An American player spoke of having seen a lady riding on a trolley, and the audience went into fits.
The player was astounded; he hadn"t told his "gag" at all yet--(and, by the way, it isn"t a "gag" there; it is a "wheeze")--and the audience was laughing. And then when he finally told his "gag" not a soul laughed.
Upon investigation he found that over there what he meant by a trolley car was "_a tram_." And what they called a "trolley" was the baggage truck down at the railway station that they hauled trunks around on.
Another of their "gags" was--
"I saw you coming out of a saloon this morning."
"Well, I couldn"t stay in there all day, could I?"
Received with more chunks of silence.
He meant a place where they sold liquor. He should have said "_a Pub_."
A "saloon" there is a barber shop.
The ticket office is the booking office.
The ticket agent is the booking clerk (p.r.o.nounced "clark").
A depot is the railway station.
You don"t buy your ticket; you "book your ticket."
A policeman is a "Bobbie."
You drive to the left and walk to the right.
An automobile is a motor car.
The carburetor is the mixer.
The storage battery is the acc.u.mulator.