too. He said Ed
was known far and wide as the world's challenge cornetist. I says all
right, if he'll play something neutral; and Doc says he'll play "Listen
to the Mocking Bird," with variations, and play it so swell you'll
think you're perched right up in the treetops listening to Nature's own
feathered songsters.

That about made up my show, including, of course, the Spanish dance by
Beryl Mae Macomber. Red Gap always expects that and Beryl Mae never
disappoints 'em--makes no difference what the occasion is. Mebbe it's an
Evening with Shakespeare, or the Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers, or that
Oratorio by Elijah somebody, but Beryl Mae is right there with her
girlish young beauty and her tambourine. You see, I didn't want it a
long show--just enough to make the two-bits admission seem a little
short of robbery. Our real graft, of course, was to be where the young
society debutantes and heiresses in charge of the booths would wheedle
money out of the dazed throng for chances on the junk that would be
donated.

[Illustration: "ALL SUNNED UP LIKE A MAN THAT KNOWS THE WORLD IS HIS
OYSTER AND EVERY MONTH'S GOT AN 'R' IN IT"]

Well, about three days before the show I went up to Masonic Hall to see
about the stage decorations, and I was waiting while some one went down
to the Turf Exchange to get the key off Tim Mahoney, the janitor--Tim
had lately had to do janitor work for a B'nai B'rith lodge that was
holding meetings there, and it had made him gloomy and dissolute--and,
while I was waiting, who should come tripping along but Egbert Floud,
all sunned up like a man that knows the world is his oyster and every
month's got an "r" in it. Usually he's a kind of sad, meek coot, looking
neglected and put upon; but now he was actually giggling to himself
as he come up the stairs two at a time.

"Well, Old-Timer, what has took the droop out of your face?" I ask him.

"Why," he says, twinkling all over the place, "I'm aiming to keep it a
secret, but I don't mind hinting to an old friend that my part of the
evening's entertainment is going to be so good it'll make the whole show
top-heavy. Them ladies said they'd rely on me to think up something
novel, and I said I would if I could, and I did--that's all. I'd seen
enough of these shows where you ladies pike along with pincushions and
fancy lemonade and infants' wear--and mebbe a red plush chair, with gold
legs, that plays 'Alice, Where Art Thou?' when a person sets down on
it