“I’d be a shine to turn it down,” said Mac.  “And I hope you understand I appreciate it.  Me and my cousin Cliff McGowan was thinking of getting a try-out at Creary’s on amateur night a month from to-morrow.”

“Good stuff!” said Delano.  “I got mine there.  Junius T. Rollins, the booker for Kuhn & Dooley, jumped on the stage and engaged me after my dance.  And the boards were an inch deep in nickels and dimes and quarters.  There wasn’t but nine penny pieces found in the lot.”

“I ought to tell you,” said Mac, after two minutes of pensiveness, “that my cousin Cliff can beat me dancing.  We’ve always been what you might call pals.  If you’d take him up instead of me, now, it might be better.  He’s invented a lot of steps that I can’t cut.”

“Forget it,” said Delano.  “Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays of every week from now till amateur night, a month off, I’ll coach you.  I’ll make you as good as I am; and nobody could do more for you.  My act’s over every night at 10:15.  Half an hour later I’ll take you up and drill you till twelve.  I’ll put you at the top of the bunch, right where I am.  You’ve got talent.  Your style’s bum; but you’ve got the genius.  You let me manage it.  I’m from the West Side myself, and I’d rather see one of the same gang win out before I would an East-Sider, or any of the Flatbush or Hackensack Meadow kind of butt-iners.  I’ll see that Junius Rollins is present on your Friday night; and if he don’t climb over the footlights and offer you fifty a week as a starter, I’ll let you draw it down from my own salary every Monday night.  Now, am I talking on the level or am I not?”

Amateur night at Creary’s Eighth Avenue Theatre is cut by the same pattern as amateur nights elsewhere.  After the regular performance the humblest talent may, by previous arrangement with the management, make its debut upon the public stage.  Ambitious non-professionals, mostly self-instructed, display their skill and powers of entertainment along the broadest lines.  They may sing, dance, mimic, juggle, contort, recite, or disport themselves along any of the ragged boundary lines of Art.  From the ranks of these anxious tyros are chosen the professionals that adorn or otherwise make conspicuous the full-blown stage.  Press-agents delight in recounting to open-mouthed and close-eared reporters stories of the humble beginnings of the brilliant stars whose orbits they control.

Such and such a prima donna (they will tell you) made her initial bow to the public while turning handsprings on an amateur night.  One great matinee favorite made his debut on a generous Friday evening singing coon songs of his own composition.  A tragedian famous on two continents and an island first attracted attention by an amateur impersonation of a newly landed Scandinavian peasant girl.  One Broadway comedian that turns ’em away got a booking on a Friday night by reciting (seriously) the graveyard scene in “Hamlet.”