utterly chaotic, yet not
contemptible; there ran through it a rage of improvisation which came
chiefly from Crook the clown. Commonly he was a clever man, and he was
inspired tonight with a wild omniscience, a folly wiser than the world,
that which comes to a young man who has seen for an instant a particular
expression on a particular face. He was supposed to be the clown, but
he was really almost everything else, the author (so far as there was an
author), the prompter, the scene-painter, the scene-shifter, and, above
all, the orchestra. At abrupt intervals in the outrageous performance
he would hurl himself in full costume at the piano and bang out some
popular music equally absurd and appropriate.

The climax of this, as of all else, was the moment when the two front
doors at the back of the scene flew open, showing the lovely moonlit
garden, but showing more prominently the famous professional guest; the
great Florian, dressed up as a policeman. The clown at the piano played
the constabulary chorus in the "Pirates of Penzance," but it was drowned
in the deafening applause, for every gesture of the great comic actor
was an admirable though restrained version of the carriage and manner
of the police. The harlequin leapt upon him and hit him over the helmet;
the pianist playing "Where did you get that hat?" he faced about in
admirably simulated astonishment, and then the leaping harlequin hit him
again (the pianist suggesting a few bars of "Then we had another one").
Then the harlequin rushed right into the arms of the policeman and fell
on top of him, amid a roar of applause. Then it was that the strange
actor gave that celebrated imitation of a dead man, of which the fame
still lingers round Putney. It was almost impossible to believe that a
living person could appear so limp.

The athletic harlequin swung him about like a sack or twisted or tossed
him like an Indian club; all the time to the most maddeningly ludicrous
tunes from the piano. When the harlequin heaved the comic constable
heavily off the floor the clown played "I arise from dreams of thee."
When he shuffled him across his back, "With my bundle on my shoulder,"
and when the harlequin finally let fall the policeman with a most
convincing thud, the lunatic at the instrument struck into a jingling
measure with some words which are still believed to have been, "I sent a
letter to my love and on the way I dropped it."

At about this limit of mental anarch