e that's connected with Wall
Street, and a fluffy wife that has a magnetic gentleman friend in a
sport suit, and a lady crook that has had husband in her toils, only he
sees it all now, and tears and strangulations and divorce, and a
faithful old butler that suffers keenly and would go on doing it without
a cent of wages if he could only bring every one together again, and a
shot up in the bathroom or somewhere and gripping moments and so
forth--I want to tell you we was all painfully shocked by this break of
the knowing New Yorker. We could hardly believe it was true during the
first act. Jeff Tuttle kept wanting to know when the girls was coming
on, and didn't they have a muscle dancer in the piece. Ben himself was
highly embarrassed and even suspicious for a minute. He looks at the New
Yorker sharply and says ain't that a crocheted necktie he's wearing, and
the New Yorker says it is and was made for him by his aunt. But Ben
ain't got the heart to question him any further. He puts away his base
suspicions and tries to get the New Yorker to tell us all about what a
good play this is so we'll feel more entertained. So the lad tells us
the leading woman is a sterling actress of legitimate methods--all too
hard to find in this day of sensationalism, and the play is a triumph of
advanced realism written by a serious student of the drama that is
trying to save our stage from commercial degradation. He explained a lot
about the lesson of the play. Near as I could make out the lesson was
that divorce, nowadays, is darned near as uncertain as marriage itself.

"The husband," explains the lad kindly, "is suspected by his wife to
have been leading a double life, though of course he was never guilty of
more than an indiscretion--"

Jake Berger here exploded rudely into speech again. "Thai wife is
leading a double chin," says Jake.

"Say, people," says Lon Price, "mebbe it ain't too late to go to a show
this evening."

But the curtain went up for the second act and nobody had the nerve to
escape. There continued to be low murmurs of rebellion, just the same,
and we all lost track of this here infamy that was occurring on the
stage.

"I'm sure going to beat it in one minute," says Jeff Tuttle, "if one of
'em don't exclaim: 'Oh, girls, here comes the little dancer!'"

"I know a black-face turn that could put this show on its feet," says
Lon Price, "and that Waldo in the sport suit ain't any real reason why
wives leave home--y