“A Foofoo is something that tried to happen and then lost the address,” I explained.  “Did you ever pipe Stale’s cheery bits of humor as exemplified in one of his burning criticisms?  Well, I’ll put you wise, Bunch: 

“I went to the Kookoo theatre last night, I and myself. Voila! tout bien!  I have seen lots of shows before, I have, but I have never, I solemnly declare, seen any show so utterly banal as this.  The libretto was written by some obscure person who never reads my criticisms for if he did he would know that I abhor Dutch dialect.  One reason I hate it so much is that some people can write it so well that they make more money than I do writing English undefiled—­oh! the shame of it! Voila! tout suite!  But to return to our muttons, as we say in Paris whenever I go there.  Tottie Coughdrop played the principal part but a merciful Providence gave me a cold in the head so I couldn’t hear what she said! Voila! tout fromage de Brie!  To my mind Tottie looked like one of yesterday’s ham sandwiches, and a ‘gent’ sitting near me said she was all to the mustard, so you see great minds run in the same channel—­oh! la, la, la!  But to return to our muttons.  The show is said to have cost $25,000, but what care I? Voila! tout coalscuttle!  I’d roast it if it cost $50,000, otherwise how could I make good? Voila! tout blatherskite!  But to return to our muttons.  I went out after the first act and never did go back—­great joke on the show, wasn’t it?  Oh! la, la, la!  Still I insist that Tottie Coughdrop looked like a ham sandwich. Voila! tout fudge!”

“So that’s the kind of piffle that managers and actors have to go up against,” laughed Bunch.

“They don’t go up against it any more, Bunch,” I said.  “They are shifty young guys in the theatrical business nowadays, and they sidestep the hammer-throwers.  Mr. Stale is a back number, and his harpoon can’t stop a dollar bill from flutering into any man’s box office.”

“He thinks he can, all right,” Bunch muttered.

“Well, there are two thinks and a half still due him,” I said.  “Who ever gave that guy a license to splash ink all over a production and hold actors, authors and managers up to ridicule?  Did you ever hear of an actor or an author or a manager getting out a three-sheet which held a newspaper up to ridicule?”

“Not on your endowment policy,” Bunch chimed in.

“Well, isn’t a newspaper just as much of a public institution as a theatre?  Suppose a manager were to call in a rubberneck, hand him a tool box and send him to a newspaper office to look for a splashy production on a busy night.  Suppose, further, that after the paper went to press Mr. Rubberneck opened up his tool box and began to pound on the leading man in the print shop for having a bunch of bad grammar in his editorial column, and after that, suppose our friend with the glistening eyes jumped on one of the sub-editors because the woman’s page was out of alignment, or made a rave because the jokes in the funny column were all to the ancient, what would happen to Mr. Rubberneck, eh, what?  Sixteen editors, fourteen reporters and twenty-three linotype men would take a running kick at old Buttinski, and there wouldn’t be enough of him left to give the coroner an excuse to look solemn.”