we do get a little time to ourselves we stay up late nights.  Oh, Mellen’s Food!  When does he want us to stay up?  Mornings?  Some wise boy once said, ’Early to bed, early to rise, but you don’t meet any prominent people,’ and I guess maybe he wasn’t right.  He got the number then all right, all right, and he didn’t have to speak harsh to Central at that.  We gotta do something to amuse ourselves, and I never had a traveling gentleman yet conduct me to a watch meeting.  A girl comes out of the stage door tired and lonesome; some village cut-up prances out and gets acquainted; the girl is hungry, so why not?  Perhaps she is sending money home every week and can’t afford a little lunch after the show herself.  No, that’s no taproom jest.  There is more than one of the merry-merry putting her little sister through school and don’t you forget it for a minute.  And he gets sore because we stay up late nights.  He’d better roll another pill, get at the cause and then hang the curfew on a few of those town romps.  If he hands out another song and dance number like that again, send him up to me, I’ll give him a bunch of inside info that will make him think something broke loose.

“I managed to slip in and see ‘The Talk of New York’ the other night.  Say, that’s a great play.  Did you get wise to the way that Kid Burns party juggles the loose talk?  I don’t believe there ever was a party that slings slang the way that guy does.  My mother was always particular about my bringing up, and if I ever passed out any of this George Cohan style of repartee she would give me a slap on the map and tell me to chase back and handle my harangue as per Mr. Webster.  So, though I have traveled about a bit, I still retain my pure English, even when I lose my temper, which is going some for a lady.

“What am I going to do New Year’s?  I know one thing.  I ain’t going to play an encore to the sozzle session number I pulled off last season.  Didn’t you hear about it?  Evidently you were not on Broadway last New Year’s Eve.  A couple of young ladies and myself were playing a progressive hell party all up and down the main street.  You see, you play it this way.  A guy comes up and blows a horn in your ear.  You swat the horn quickly on the end with your hand.  If the guy swallows more than half the horn you win and are allowed to ’phone for the ambulance.  But that was only a prelude to the main event.  Ah, me!  I blush to chronicle it.  There were so many shows in town that the supply of college students didn’t come up to the demand, and as me and the bunch had sorta turned them down after they went and lost all their money on the Thanksgiving game, so we had an intimation that developed into a hunch that our little ‘welcome’ mat on the doorstep would not be crowded with an eager throng.  We engaged a couple of window tables at the Cafe des Beaux Minks realizing that though we were not in the money we were still on the track.  This was last New Year’s Eve.  New Year’s afternoon