DALY THEATRE

          Addressat A dinner after the one hundredth performance of
          “The taming of the shrew.”

          Mr. Clemens made the following speech, which he incorporated
          afterward in Following the Equator.

I am glad to be here.  This is the hardest theatre in New York to get into, even at the front door.  I never, got in without hard work.  I am glad we have got so far in at last.  Two or three years ago I had an appointment to meet Mr. Daly on the stage of this theatre at eight o’clock in the evening.  Well, I got on a train at Hartford to come to New York and keep the appointment.  All I had to do was to come to the back door of the theatre on Sixth Avenue.  I did not believe that; I did not believe it could be on Sixth Avenue, but that is what Daly’s note said—­come to that door, walk right in, and keep the appointment.  It looked very easy.  It looked easy enough, but I had not much confidence in the Sixth Avenue door.

Well, I was kind of bored on the train, and I bought some newspapers—­New Haven newspapers—­and there was not much news in them, so I read the advertisements.  There was one advertisement of a bench-show.  I had heard of bench-shows, and I often wondered what there was about them to interest people.  I had seen bench-shows—­lectured to bench-shows, in fact—­but I didn’t want to advertise them or to brag about them.  Well, I read on a little, and learned that a bench-show was not a bench-show —­but dogs, not benches at all—­only dogs.  I began to be interested, and as there was nothing else to do I read every bit of the advertisement, and learned that the biggest thing in this show was a St. Bernard dog that weighed one hundred and forty-five pounds.  Before I got to New York I was so interested in the bench-shows that I made up my mind to go to one the first chance I got.  Down on Sixth Avenue, near where that back door might be, I began to take things leisurely.  I did not like to be in too much of a hurry.  There was not anything in sight that looked like a back door.  The nearest approach to it was a cigar store.  So I went in and bought a cigar, not too expensive, but it cost enough to pay for any information I might get and leave the dealer a fair profit.  Well, I did not like to be too abrupt, to make the man think me crazy, by asking him if that was the way to Daly’s Theatre, so I started gradually to lead up to the subject, asking him first if that was the way to Castle Garden.  When I got to the real question, and he said he would show me the way, I was astonished.  He sent me through a long hallway, and I found myself in a back yard.  Then I went through a long passageway and into a little room, and there before my eyes was a big St. Bernard dog lying on a bench.  There was another door beyond and I went there, and was