The worst blow that ever struck yours truly, was when we hit a little
town in Maine called Haystack Mountain.
People there didn't appreciate good acting and the show went busted.
Well, the manager had an urgent engagement with a sick friend in New
York, and he left us high and dry.
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Some of the girls wept a little and asked how far it was to the railroad
station.
I didn't ask how far it was to the station. I knew what to do. I began
to walk.
Do you know, I never struck such a confounded lot of ties in all my
life.
The railroad must have employed non-union help. You couldn't judge them
at all. You'd strike a lot that were three feet apart and think they
were all that way. You'd go to sleep until you struck one at a four-foot
interval; then you'd wake up pretty quick and murmur gentle nothings
about the company.
About the second day out, I landed at the town of Bridgewater. I walked
into the only hotel of the place and thought I'd bluff 'em a little.
"What are the rates?" says I.
"Five dollars a day and up," says the clerk.
"Oh, come off," says I, "I'm an actor."
"In that case," says he, "it's five dollars a day, down."
Toward evening, I came to a siding where a lot of box-cars were stalled.
I crept on one of the trucks and went to sleep. I woke up to find I was
traveling at the rate of forty miles an hour.
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Suddenly I became aware that I had a visitor, and I knew my visitor had
visitors, too--because I could hear him scratching.
"Say," says I, "who the dickens are you and what do you want?"
"Look here, young feller," says the visitor, "I'm Cornelius Vanderbilt
out for a spin in my new automobile, and I won't be disturbed by the
likes of you."
"Where do you come from?" says I.
"Maryland," says he. "My father is a great farmer down there. He raised
a cabbage last year that weighed four hundred pounds. Now, who are you?"
"Why," says I, "I'm Admiral Dewey on a tour of inspection in my private
car. I'm going back to Brooklyn Navy Yard to superintend the
manufacture of a boiler, so large that it takes two hundred and fifty
men to drive one of the rivets."
"Go slow, there," says he. "What could they do with a boiler so large as
that?"
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"Why," says I, "they're going to boil that cabbage your father raised."
After a little while he told me his name was Percival Reginald Van
Dusenberry. He was an actor, but he had been walking longer than I.
When we struck the town of Grafton, we got off our Pullman, and began
looking for the graft.
Percy went up to a cottage and rapped at the door, intending to ask for
some cold victuals.
A hand shoved out and gave him a roll of green-backs. Percy was
dumfounded, but took to his heels.
When we were about two miles away, Percy looked at me, and said:
"Those lobsters took me for the landlord."
We located a restaurant presently, and sat waiting at a table for an
hour and a half.
Finally, Percy said to the fellow behind the desk:
"Are you the proprietor of this hash house?"
"Yes," says he.
"Well, then I want to know if you sent your waiter away, when you saw us
coming, so you could charge us for a night's lodging."
Just then the waiter came in.
"Say," says I, "do you know we have been waiting here for an hour and a
half?"
"That's nothing," says he, "I've been waiting here for ten years."
He placed a carafe of water on the table.
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"Look here," says Percy, "I never drink water unless it's absolutely
pure and healthy. Is this all right?"
"Sure," says the waiter.
Percy took a glassful, and most of it was pollywogs.
"Look here," says he, "I thought you said this water was healthy. Look
at those bugs."
"That only proves what I said," says the waiter. "If it wasn't healthy
the bugs couldn't live in it."
Just then Percy's eye caught a sign that read:
"All the pancakes you can eat for ten cents."
"I'm going to have some pancakes," says he. "What's yours?"
"Chicken," says I.
Percy kept eating pancakes.
When he had eaten twenty plates the boss of the joint began to get
interested.
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Percy was certainly getting the biggest ten cents' worth I ever saw,
when he stepped over and says:
"Don't you think you have had enough?"
"Just one more plate and then--" says Percy.
"Then what?" says the boss.
"Then you can tell the cook to make them a little bit thicker," says
Percy.
I tried to chew my chicken, but couldn't get it down. I managed to catch
the waiter on his fifteenth lap between the kitchen and Percy's plate,
and says:
"Waiter, this chicken is awfully tough."
"Have some pancakes, then," says Percy. "They're good and come cheap."
"Well," says the waiter, "that chicken always was a Jonah. When we
tried to kill it, the darned thing flew to the top of the house and we
had to shoot it."
"Oh, that accounts for it," says I. "Your aim was bad and you shot the
weather cock by mistake."
Percy finally got enough pancakes and paid his ten cents like a man.
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We traveled along the road that leads from the hash house, and met a
farmer with a gun.
"Say," says I, "have you seen anything worth shooting around here?"
"Not until you came," says he.