Project Gutenberg's Episodes in Van Bibber's Life, by Richard Harding Davis

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Title: Episodes in Van Bibber's Life

Author: Richard Harding Davis

Release Date: March 28, 2008 [EBook #334]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EPISODES IN VAN BIBBER'S LIFE ***

EPISODES IN VAN BIBBER'S LIFE

By

Richard Harding Davis

CONTENTS

Her First Appearance
Van Bibber's Man Servant
The Hungry Man was Fed
Love Me, Love my Dog

Her First Appearance

It was at the end of the first act of the first night of "The Sultana,"
and every member of the Lester Comic Opera Company, from Lester himself
down to the wardrobe woman's son, who would have had to work if his
mother lost her place, was sick with anxiety.

There is perhaps only one other place as feverish as it is behind the
scenes on the first night of a comic opera, and that is a newspaper
office on the last night of a Presidential campaign, when the returns
are being flashed on the canvas outside, and the mob is howling, and
the editor-in-chief is expecting to go to the Court of St. James if the
election comes his way, and the office-boy is betting his wages that it
won't.

Such nights as these try men's souls; but Van Bibber passed the
stage-door man with as calmly polite a nod as though the piece had been
running a hundred nights, and the manager was thinking up souvenirs for
the one hundred and fiftieth, and the prima donna had, as usual, begun
to hint for a new set of costumes. The stage-door keeper hesitated and
was lost, and Van Bibber stepped into the unsuppressed excitement of
the place with a pleased sniff at the familiar smell of paint and
burning gas, and the dusty odor that came from the scene-lofts above.

For a moment he hesitated in the cross-lights and confusion about him,
failing to recognize in their new costumes his old acquaintances of the
company; but he saw Kripps, the stage-manager, in the centre of the
stage, perspiring and in his shirt-sleeves as always, wildly waving an
arm to some one in the flies, and beckoning with the other to the
gasman in the front entrance. The stage hands were