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at I mean." "Vot you mean? Dot I should sit in it so?" and the German actor plumped himself into the chair in question by approaching it so that he could sit on it in astride, in reverse position, folding his arms over the rounded back. "No--no, not that way--not as if you were riding a horse!" cried the manager. "Throw yourself into it with abandon, as the stage directions call for." "Let me show him," broke in the melancholy voice of Wellington Bunn. Striding into the scene, which had been interrupted to enable this bit of rehearsal to be gone through with, the old Shakespearean actor approached the chair and cast himself into it as though he had lost his last friend, and had no hope left on earth. "That's the way--that's the idea--copy that!" cried Mr. Pertell, enthusiastically. But he spoke too soon. Mr. Bunn had cast himself into the chair with such "abandon" that the chair abandoned him. It fell apart, it disintegrated, it parted company with its legs--all at once--so that chair and actor came to the ground in a heap. "Oh, my! I am injured! A physician, I beseech you!" moaned Mr. Bunn, while others of the cast rushed to help him to his feet. He was soon pulled from the ruins of the chair. "Ach! So. I unterstandt now!" exclaimed Mr. Switzer. "I haf your meaning now, of vat 'abandon' is, Mr. Pertell. I am to break der chair ven I sits on it, yes? Dot is 'abandon' a chair. Vot a queer lanquitch der English is, alretty. Vell, brings me annuder chair und I vill abandon it!" Mr. Pertell threw his hands upwards in a despairing gesture. "No--no!" he cried. "I didn't mean that way." "Than vot you means?" asked the German, puzzled. Meanwhile Wellington Bunn was painfully walking over to a more substantial chair. "That was all a trick!" he cried. "You did that on purpose, Mr. Snooks. You provided a broken chair!" "I did not!" protested the property man. "It was the way you threw yourself into it. What did you think it was made of--iron?" "I knew something would happen!" observed Mr. Sneed, gloomily. "I felt it in my bones." "Und I guess me dot he veels it in his bones, now," chuckled Mr. Switzer. "I am glat dot I, myself, did not abandon dot chair alretty yet." The play went on after a little delay, and for some time after that the Shakespearean actor was very chary of offering to show other actors how to put "abandon" into their parts. So far as could be told by an inspection o
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