anager leaves the curtain up and Emily steps back behind a rope that a
couple of the hands stretches acrosst the stage, with me standing on one
side of her and Windy on the other; and then a couple more hands shoves
a wooden runway acrosst the orchestra rail down into one of the side
aisles; and then the house-manager invites Emily's young friends to
march up the runway and crosst over from left to right, handing out
their free-will offerings to her as they pass.

"During this pleasant scene, as the manager explains, Emily's dauntless
owner, the world-famous Professor Zendavesta Jordan, meaning Windy, will
lecture on the size, dimensions, habits and quaint peculiarities of this
wondrous creature. That last part suits Windy right down to the ground,
him being, as I told you before, the kind of party who's never so happy
as when he's started his mouth and gone away and left it running.

"For maybe a half a minute after the house-manager finishes his little
spiel, the kids sort of hang back. Then the rush starts; and take it
from me, little one, it's some considerable rush. Here they come up that
runway--tiny tots in blue, and tiny tots in red, and tiny tots in white;
tiny tots with their parents, guardians or nurses, and tiny tots
without none; tiny tots that are beginning to outgrow the tiny tottering
stage, and other varieties of tiny tots too numerous to mention. And
clutched in each and every tiny tot's chubby hand is a bag of peanuts,
five-cent size or ten-cent size, but mostly five-cent size. As Emily
sees 'em coming, she smiles until she looks in the face like one of
these here old-fashioned red-brick Colonial fireplaces, with an
overgrown black Christmas stocking hanging down from the centre of the
mantel.

"Up comes the first and foremost of the tiny tots. The Santy Claus
stocking reaches out and annexes the free-will offering. There's a faint
crunching sound; that there sack of peanuts has went to the bourne from
out which no peanut, up until that time, has ever been known to return;
and Emily is smiling benevolently and reaching out for the next sack.
And behind the second kid is the third kid, and behind the third kid
still more kids, and as far as the human eye can reach, there ain't
nothing on the horizon of that show-shop but just kids--kids and
peanuts.

"It certainly was a beauteous spectacle to behold so many of the dear
little ones advancing up that runway with peanuts. To myself I says: 'I
guess I'