“That is the name of the play,” I mused. “Mighty good name, too. Full of
meaning, like 'shout Zo-Zo' and 'Paskala' and--”
The bell rang again.
“Perkins's performers. Good-by,” came the voice of my great friend.
“Great!” I shouted, but Perkins had already rung off.
He came back in about half an hour with four young men in tow.
“Good idea,” I said, “male quartettes always take well.”
Perkins waved his hand scornfully. Perkins could do that. He could do
anything, could Perkins. “Quartette? No,” he said, “the play.” He locked
the office door, and put the key in his pocket. “The play is in them,”
he said, “and they are in here. They don't get out until they get the
play out.”
He tapped the long-haired young man on the shoulder.
“Love lyrics,” he said, briefly.
The thin young man with a sad countenance he touched on the arm and
said, “Comic songs,” and pointing to the youth who wore the baggiest
trousers, he said, “Dialogue.” He did not have to tell me that the
wheezy little German contained the music of our play. I knew it by the
way he wheezed.
Perkins swept me away from my desk, and deposited one young man there,
and another at his desk. The others he gave each a window-sill, and to
each of the four he handed a pencil and writing-pad.
“Write!” he said, and they wrote.
As fast as the poets finished a song, they handed it to the composer,
who made suitable music for it. It was good music--it all reminded you
of something else. If it wasn't real music, it was at least founded on
fact.
The play did not have much plot, but it had plenty of places for the
chorus to come in in tights or short skirts--and that is nine-tenths of
any comic opera. I knew it was the real thing as soon as I read it. The
dialogue was full of choice bits like,--
“So you think you can sing?”
“Well, I used to sing in good old boyhood's hour.”
“Then why don't you sing it?”
“Sing what?”
“Why, 'In Good Old Boyhood's Hour,'” and then he would sing it.
The musical composer sang us some of the lyrics, just to let us see
how clever they were; but he wheezed too much to do them justice. He
admitted that they would sound better if a pretty woman with a swell
costume and less wheeze sang them.
The plot of the play--it was in three acts--was original, so far as
there was any plot. The Princess of Pilliwink loved the Prince of Guam;
but her father, the leading funny man, and King of Pilliwink, wanted her
to marry Gonzolo, an Italian, because Gonzolo owned the only hand-organ
in the kingdom. To escape this marriage, the Princess disguised herself
as a Zulu maiden, and started for Zululand in an automobile. The second
act was, therefore, in Zululand, with songs about palms and a grand
cakewalk of Amazons, who captured another Italian organ-grinder. At the
request of the princess, this organ-grinder was thrown into prison. In
the third act he was discovered to be the Prince of Guam, and everything
ended beautifully.
Perkins paid the author syndicate spot cash, and unlocked the door and
let them go. He did not want any royalties hanging over him. “Ah!” he
said, as soon as they were out of sight.
We spent the night editing the play. Neither Perkins nor I knew anything
about plays, but we did our best. We changed that play from an every-day
comic opera into a bright and sparkling gem. Anything that our author
syndicate had omitted we put in. I did the writing and Perkins dictated
to me. We put in a disrobing scene, in which the Princess was discovered
in pain, and removed enough of her dress to allow her to place a
Perkins's Patent Porous Plaster between her shoulders, after which she
sang the song beginning,--
“Now my heart with rapture thrills,”
only we changed it to:--
“How my back with rapture thrills.”
That song ended the first act; and when the opera was played, we had
boys go up and down the aisles during the intermission selling Perkins's
Patent Porous Plasters, on which the words and music of the song were
printed. It made a great hit.
The drinking song--every opera has one--we changed just a little.
Instead of tin goblets each singer had a box of Perkins's Pink Pellets;
and, as they sang, they touched boxes with each other, and swallowed the
Pink Pellets. It was easy to change the song from
“Drain the red wine-cup--
Each good fellow knows
The jolly red wine-cup
Will cure all his woes”
to the far more moral and edifying verse,--
“Eat the Pink Pellet,
For every one knows
That Perkins's Pink Pellets
Will cure all his woes.”
When Perkins had finished touching up that opera, it was not such an
every-day opera as it had been. He put some life into it.
I asked him if he didn't think he had given it a rather commercial
atmosphere by introducing the Porous Plaster and the Pink Pellets, but
he only smiled knowingly.
“Wait!” he said, “wait a week. Wait until Perkins circulates himself
around town. Why should the drama be out of date? Why avoid all
interest? Why not have the opera teem with the life of the day? Why
not?” He laid one leg gently over the arm of his chair and tilted his
hat back on his head.
“Literature, art, drama,” he said, “the phonographs of civilization.
Where is the brain of the world? In literature, art, and the drama.
These three touch the heartstrings; these three picture mankind; these
three teach us. They move the world.”
“Yes,” I said.
“Good!” exclaimed Perkins. “But why is the drama weak? Why no more
Shakespeares? Why no more Molières? Because the real life-blood of
to-day isn't in the drama. What is the life-blood of to-day?”