town were playing to S.R.O.

"I got a chance to shake down a little change as prima donna with a
turkey show. What do you know about that? I played with one last
Thanksgiving, and--excuse these tears--it was a college town and the
show was on the blink. 'Nough said. The manager hasn't left there yet.

"Oh, Listerine, have you heard the news? Alia McGraw has turned poetess.
You know she always was peculiar. I was visiting her the other evening
in her dressing room when she declared that she was going to give up her
dramatic art and go to painting word pictures. Whatever they are. You
see it was this way: She had a boob on her staff who was paying her his
devoted attention. According to her statistics that's all he ever did
pay for. Well, he commenced doing advance work about a present he was
going to give her until he got poor Alla to thinking that it was nothing
less than an automobile, and she treated him accordingly. One morning a
messenger boy makes his entrance into the flat and hands her a book. Can
you beat that? The only thing that kept Alia from foaming at the mouth
was because she was combing her Dutch braid. It--the book--was called a
Rubaiyat by Omar Quinine, or something like that. This Omar party never
wrote a comic opera in his life. But Alla wasn't discouraged, for she
looked through every page in hopes of finding a Clearing House
certificate, but not a leaf stirred. All she came across was a marked
verse that went something like this:

"A book of verse underneath a bough,
A Jug of wine, a loaf of bread and thou
Beside me sitting in the wilderness--
Oh, wilderness is Paradise enow.

"Did you ever hear of such a short sport? Wanted to buy it by the keg
and go sit under a tree in Bronx Park. As soon as Alla run out of
language she sat down and in less than three hours doped out an answer.
I got it here on the back of her laundry list:

"A book of verse is not what I can use,
But give me, if still my love is thine,
A wine list from which to pick and choose.
Cut out the shady bough for mine.

"Give your bough to some nice 'feller,'
And if you would make my life sublime
Put me in some cool rathskeller
And we'll forget the jug of wine.

"Wine in a jug! What do I hear?
Not with a loaf of bread and thou,
A cheese sandwich and a glass of beer,
Unless you've changed your brand ere now.

"This sitting in the wilderness may be fine
For those who the rea