HE TURNS SUPE. THE BAD BOY QUITS JERKING SODA--ENTERS THE
DRAMATIC PROFESSION--“WHAT'S A SUPER”--THE PRIVILEGES OP A
SUPE'S FATHER--BEHIND THE SCENES--THE BAD BOY HAS PLAYED
WITH MC'CULLOUGH--“I WAS THE POPULACE”--PLAYS IT ON HIS
SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHER--“I PRITHEE, AU RESERVOIR, I GO
HENS!”
“You look pretty sleepy,” said the grocery man to the bad boy, as he
came in the store yawning, and stretched himself out on the counter
with his head on a piece of brown wrapping paper, in reach of a box of
raisins, “what's the matter? Been sitting up with your girl all night?”
“Naw! I wish I had. Wakefullness with my girl is sweeter and more
restful than sleep. No, this is the result of being a dutiful son, and I
am tired. You see Pa and Ma have separated. That is, not for keeps, but
Pa has got frightened about burglars, and he gets up into the attic to
sleep. He says it is to get fresh air, but he knows better. Ma has got
so accustomed to Pa's snoring that she can't go to sleep without it,
and the first night Pa left she didn't sleep a wink, and yesterday I was
playing on an old accordeon that I traded a dog collar for after our dog
was poisoned, and when I touched the low notes I noticed Ma dozed oft to
sleep, it sounded so much like Pa's snore, and last night Ma made me set
up and play for her to sleep. She rested splendid, but I am all broke
up, and I sold the accordeon this morning to the watchman who watches
our block, It is queer what a different effect music will have on
different people. While Ma was sleeping the sleep of innocence under
the influence of my counterfeit of Pa's snore, the night watchman was
broke of his rest by it, and he bought it of me to give it to the son of
an enemy of his. Well, I have quit jerking soda.
“No you don't tell me,” said the grocery man as he moved the box of
raisins out of reach. “You never will amount to anything unless you
stick to one trade or profession. A rolling hen never catches the early
angleworm.”
“O, but I am all right now. In the soda water business, there is no
chance for genius to rise unless the soda fountain explodes. It is all
wind, and one gets tired of the constant fizz. He feels that he is a
fraud, and when he puts a little syrup in a tumbler, and fires a little
sweetened wind and water in it until the soap suds fills the tumbler,
and charges ten cents for that which only costs a cent, a sensitive soda
jerker, who has reformed, feels that it is worse than three card monte.
I couldn't stand the wear on my conscience, so I have got a permanent
job as a super, and shall open the 1st of September.
“Say, what's a super? It isn't one of these free lunch places, that the
mayor closes at midnight, is it?” and the grocery man looked sorry.
“O, thunder, you want salt on you. A super is an adjunct to the stage. A
supe is a fellow that assists the stars and things, carrying chairs and
taking up carpets, and sweeping the sand off the stage after a dancer
has danced a jig, and he brings beer for the actors, and helps lace
up corsets, and anything he can do to add to the effect of the play.
Privately, now, I have been acting as a supe for a long time, on the
sly, and my folks didn't know anything about it, but since I reformed
and decided to be good, I felt it my duty to tell Ma and Pa about it.
The news broke Ma all up, at first, but Pa said some of the best actors
in this country were supes once, and some of them were now, and he
thought suping would be the making of me. Ma thought going on the stage
would be my ruination. She said the theater was the hotbed of sin, and
brought more ruin than the church could head off. But when I told her
that they always gave a supe two or three extra tickets for his family,
she said the theatre had some redeeming features, and when I said my
entrance upon the stage would give me a splendid opportunity to get the
recipe for face powder from the actresses, for Ma, and I could find out
how the actresses managed to get number four feet into number one shoes,
Ma said she wished I would commence suping right off. Ma says there are
some things about the theater that are not so alfired bad, and she wants
me to get seats for the first comic opera that comes along. Pa wants
it understood with the manager that a supe's father has a right to go
behind the scenes to see that no harm befalls him, but I know what Pa
wants. He may seem pious, and all that, but he likes to look at ballet
girls better than any meek and lowly follower I ever see, and some day
you will hear music in the air. Pa thinks theaters are very bad, when
he has to pay a dollar for a reserved seat, but when he can get in for
nothing as a relative of one of the 'perfesh', the theater has many
redeeming qualities. Pa and Ma think I am going into the business fresh
and green, but I know all about it. When I played with McCullough here
once--
“Oh, what are you giving us,” said the grocery man in disgust, “when you
played with McCullough! What did you do!”
“What did I do? Why, you old seed cucumber, the whole play centered
around me. Do you remember the scene in the Roman forum, where
McCullough addressed the populace of Rome? I was the populace. Don't you
remember a small feller standing in front of the Roman orator taking
it in; with a night shirt on, with bare legs and arms? That was me,
and everything depended on me. Suppose I had gone off the stage at the
critical moment, or laughed when I should have looked fierce at the
inspired words of the Roman senator, it would have been a dead give away
on McCollough. As the populace of Rome I consider myself a glittering
success, and Mc took me by the hand when they carried Cæsar's dead
body out, and he said, 'us three did ourselves proud.' Such praise
from McCollough is seldom accorded to a supe. But I don't consider the
populace of the imperial city of Rome my master piece. Where I excel
is in coming out before the curtain between the acts, and unhooking the
carpet. Some supes go out and turn their backs to the audience, showing
patches on their pants, and rip up the carpet with no style about them,
and the dust flies, and the boys yell 'supe,' and the supe gets nervous
and forgets his cue, and goes off tumbling over the carpet, and the
orchestra leader is afraid the supe will fall on him. But I go out with
a quiet dignity that is only gained by experience, and I take hold of
the carpet the way Hamlet takes up the skull of Yorick, and the audience
is paralized. I kneel down on the carpet, to unhook it, in a devotional
sort of a way that makes the audience bow their heads as though they
were in church, and before they realize that I am only a supe I have the
carpet unhooked and march out the way a 'Piscopal minister does when
he goes out between the acts at church to change his shirt. They never
'guy' me, cause I act well my part. But I kick on holding dogs for
actresses. Some supes think they are made if they can hold a dog, but
I have an ambition that a pug dog will not fill. I held Mary Anderson's
cud of gum once, while she went on the stage, and when she came off and
took her gum her fingers touched mine and I had to run my fingers in
my hair to warm them, like a fellow does when he has been snow-balling.
Gosh, but she would freeze ice cream without salt. I shall be glad when
the theatrical season opens, 'cause we actors get tired laying off.
“Well, I'd like to go behind the scenes with you some night,” said the
grocery man, offering the bad boy an orange to get solid with him, in
view of future complimentary tickets. “No danger, is there?”
“No danger if you keep off the grass. But you'd a dide to see my Sunday
School teacher one Saturday night last summer. He keeps books in a
store, and is pretty soon week days, but he can tell you more about
Daniel in the lion's den on Sunday than anybody. He knew I was solid at
the theater, and wanted me to get him behind the scenes one night,
and another supe wanted to go to the sparring match, and I thought it
wouldn't be any harm to work my teacher in, so I got him a job that
night to hold the dogs for the Uncle Tom's show. He was in one of the
wings holding the chains, and the dogs were just anxious to go on, and
it was all my teacher could do to hold them. I told him to wind the
chains around his wrists, and he did so, and just then Eliza began to
skip across the ice, and we sicked the blood hounds on before my teacher
could unwind the chains from his wrists, and the dogs pulled him right
out on the stage, on his stomach, and drawed him across, and he jerked
one dog and kicked him in the stomach, and the dog turned on my teacher
and took a mouthful of his coat tail and shook it, and I guess the dog
got some meat, anyway the teacher climbed up a step ladder, and the dogs
treed him, and the step ladder fell down, and we grabbed the dogs
and put some court plaster on the teacher's nose, where the fire
extinguisher peeled it, and he said he would go home, cause the theater
was demoralizing in its tendencies.”
[Illustration: The Sunday School Teachers first appearance on stage 140]
“I spose it was not right, but when the teacher stood up to hear our
Sunday School lesson the next day, cause he was tired where the dog bit
him, I said 'sick-em,' in a whisper, when his back was turned, and he
jumped clear over to the Bible class, and put his hands around to his
coat tail as though he thought the Uncle Tom's Cabin party were giving
a matinee in the church. The Sunday school lesson was about the dog's
licking the sores of Lazarus, and the teacher said we must not confound
the good dogs of Bible time with the savage beasts of the present day,
that would shake the daylights out of Lazarus and make him climb the
cedars of Lebanon quicker than you could say Jack Robinson, and go off
chewing the cud of bitter reflection on Lazarus' coat tail. I don't
think a Sunday school teacher ought to bring up personal reminiscences
before a class of children, do you? Well, some time next fall you put
on a clean shirt and a pair of sheet iron pants, with stove legs on the
inside, and I will take you behind the scenes to see some good moral
show. In the meantime, if you have occasion to talk with Pa, tell him
that Booth, and Barrett, and Keene commenced on the stage as supes, and
Salvini roasted peanuts in the lobby of some theater. I want our folks
to feel that I am taking the right course to become a star. I prythee
_au reservoir_. I go hens! but to return. Avaunt!” And the bad boy
walked out on his toes _a la_ Booth.