e funny sheet of the Sunday papers!

They think the vaudeville or movie cut-up that does the funny falls is
a vulgar lunatic who ought to be in jail, and their idea of the height
of humor is the way a iceman pronounces decollete, or somethin' like
that.

I like my own comedy straight! I want it to wallop me right on the
laugher, so's I can get it the first time and giggle myself sick. I'm
extry strong for the loud and common guffaw, and I claim that because I
go into hysterics over the fat-man-on-the-banana-peel stuff, it don't
prove that I'm a heavy drinker, beat my wife and will probably wind up
in jail. On general principles I'm infatuated with the bird that can
make me laugh, and I don't care how he does it as long as he makes
good. I care not whether he laughs with me or for me, as long as
they's a snicker in there somewheres. I can even stand him laughin' at
me, because, if his stuff is funny enough--I'll laugh too!

No guy who can look around him, no matter how things is breakin' for
him and see somethin' to laugh at as the mob goes by, is beat. That
bird is just gettin' ready to pull a new punch from somewheres and he's
the baby you want to watch! The guy that can't see nothin' funny in
life, whether he's eight or eighty, is through!

Me and Kid Scanlan saved one of them guys. His name was Jason Van Ness.

I was sittin' in Genaro's office one afternoon about seven or eight
months after me and the Kid had decided to give the movies a boost,
when the door opens and in comes a guy which at first glance I figured
must at least be the governor of the state. He's there with a cane, a
high hat and the general makeup of a Wall Street broker in a play where
he won't forgive his son for marryin' the ingenue. Also, he's built
all over like a heavyweight champ, except his face, the same runnin' to
the dignified lines of the bloodhounds, them big, flabby, over-lappin'
jaws--get me?

"I say, old chap--are you Mister Genaro?" he pipes.

"Nope!" I says. "I'm Johnny Green, manager of Kid Scanlan,
welterweight champion of the world."

"Really!" he remarks.

"Well," I says, "d'ye wanna see the contract or will we go over to a
notary so's I can swear to it?"

At that he frowns and waves a finger at me.

"Come, my man," he says, "no chaffing now! You may tell Mister Genaro
I have arrived! Of course you know who I am?"

That "my man!" thing was a trifle more than I could take! I throws my
feet up on Genar