mouth, Mam."

* * * * *

One cold, blustery day several of us were sitting in the stage door
tender's little room at the Orpheum, Denver, when the door was thrown
open and in hurried a boy of fifteen or sixteen.

"Where's Cressy?" he asked briskly.

"Right here," I answered in the same manner.

"I want a sketch."

"All right."

"What do you charge?"

"Five hundred dollars."

"Gee Zip!"

And he was out the door and gone.

* * * * *

At the Minneapolis Orpheum a chap with a jag came weaving his way out
from the auditorium and over to the box-office window.

"Shay," he said thickly; "wha' do you want to hire such bad acters for?
They're rotten."

The ticket seller asked which ones he objected to.

"Why, tha' ol' Rube, and that gal in there; they're rotten."

"What are you talking about?" said the ticket seller; "that is Cressy
and Dayne; they are the Headliners; they are fine."

The man looked at him a moment, as if to see if he really meant it; then
he asked earnestly,

"Hones'ly?"

"Certainly."

For another moment he studied, then as he turned away, he shook his head
sadly and said,

"I shall never go to another vaudeville show as long as I live."

IT'S HARD TO MAKE THE OLD FOLKS BELIEVE IT

We may be Actors and Actresses (with capital "A's") to the public; we
may have our names in big letters on the billboards and in the programs;
but to The Old Folks At Home we are just the same no-account boys and
girls we always were. We may be Headliners in New York, Boston, Chicago
and San Francisco, but back home we are still just Jimmie and Johnnie
and Charlie that "went on the stage."

Charlie Smith, of Smith & Campbell, in his younger days used to drive a
delivery wagon for his father's fish market. But tiring of the fish
business he started out to be "a Acter." At the end of five years he had
reached a point where the team commanded (and sometimes got) a salary of
eighty dollars a week. As driver of the fish wagon he had received
eight. And he determined to go home and "show them." Dressing the part
properly for his "grand entre" put a fearful dent in his "roll"; so much
so that he had to change what remained into one and two dollar bills in
order to "make a flash."

But when he struck the old home town he was "a lily of the valley"; he
had a Prince Albert coat, a silk hat, patent-leather shoes, an
almost-gold watch and ch