“Il Trovatore” for an encore. Later she played again, and was encored
repeatedly. As for me, I had as difficult an audience as ever confronted
a humorist, or any other sort of speaker, but the success was complete
and the fun was contagious. It was curious to see how an audience, of so
many different states of mind, could be affected by humor and music. I
have had far less appreciative audiences among sane people, and have been
at my wits’ end to rouse them. Here is a story that tells how Digby Bell
once roused a cold audience without giving offense; it proved the biggest
hit of his act. He recently had to deal with a particularly frigid
audience, and the best of his jokes met with but indifferent success.
There happened to be a little flag fastened on one side of the stage,
and the humorist, after delivering his last joke ineffectually, ran
over, gravely pulled the banner down to half-mast and made his exit. The
audience appreciated the sarcastic proceeding, and applauded him till he
was obliged to give them a little additional entertainment, and this time
he had no need to complain of their appreciation.
XII
SUNSHINE IN SHADY PLACES
On Blackwell’s Island.—Snakes and Snake Charmers.—Insane People
as Audiences.—A Poorhouse That was a Large House.—I am Well
Known by Another Profession.—Criminals are not Fools.—Some
Pathetic Experiences.—The Largest Fee I Ever Received.
For many years the late Cornelius Vanderbilt paid me a regular salary to
visit a lot of charitable institutions,—the Almshouse, the Penitentiary,
the Newsboys’ Lodging House and a number of other places, where laughter
was not part of the regular daily exercises and was therefore valued
most highly. One of the places frequently visited was the Insane Asylum
on Blackwell’s Island, and I was often invited to lunch with the
Superintendent. A harmless patient, who was employed as waiter, was at
times quite amusing through her faculty for seeing people where none
existed. She would often stop and argue indignantly with some one whom
she imagined was in her way, and to see how with a tray of dishes in
her hands she scolded the empty air, was first very funny and afterward
creepingly uncanny. Once she imagined that one of these annoying people
had climbed upon the table, and she attacked him so savagely with a broom
that we had to have a new set of dishes and goblets.
One night a severe storm compelled me to remain at the Asylum. My friend
the house-surgeon gave me a comfortable room, near the wing where the
more violent patients were confined. In the middle of the night, one of
these began to rave and scream; his appeals for help were pitiful. I put
my head out of my door and asked an attendant what was the matter.
[Illustration: “For God’s Sake Come! There’s a Woman in my Room.”]
“He’s seeing snakes,” was the reply, “but he’ll be all right in a
few minutes.” Just then the man informed the neighborhood of a new
misfortune, by shouting,
“For God’s sake come to me quick. There’s a woman in my room!” Again he
became quiet and the attendant said,
“It’s all right now.”
“Yes,” I replied: “she must have been a snake charmer.”
I always found insane audiences very appreciative. Probably the majority
of them were “out of their head” on one subject only. Certainly their
enjoyment of song and pantomime was very keen, and their interest in
my exhibitions of ventriloquism was quite pathetic. Whenever I threw
my voice in a certain direction, some of them would look under chairs
and tables, in search of the supposed person who was talking. The poor
creatures took such hold of my sympathies that I exerted myself to amuse
them optically, for the eye is the surest route to the wits. I would,
while on the platform, make quickly different articles of colored paper
and give them to the patients, whose pleasure was as childlike as it was
sincere.
On one of my visits I was startled by coming face to face with a notice
which read “Almshouse wagon reserved for Marshall P. Wilder and party
from 12 to 4.” On inquiry I learned that this wagon was a Pooh Bah among
vehicles, serving by turns as patrol wagon, ambulance and hearse, so it
took some jollying of myself to ward off gruesome imaginings and keep my
risibilities in working order.
At one of the Almshouse entertainments at which the room was packed, I
said, “This is the first time I ever knew a poor house to be such a large
house,” and the audience “caught on” as quick as a flash.
The only painful experience of my years as an entertainer among the
public institutions was at the Home for Consumptives, at Fordham. The
patients were cheerful and spirited, as consumptives always are, and
they seemed to enjoy my jokes mightily, but laughter usually brought
on violent fits of coughing, so I would have to wait from five to ten
minutes after a joke, before I dared venture another.
I always recall with pleasure a visit to Elmira, where I had the
brightest and most responsive audience of my whole career. It was at the
State Reformatory, and there were three or four thousand prisoners in the
audience. Mr. Brockway, the Superintendent, said he would like me to talk
about ten minutes, and asked kindly if that would be too long to talk
continuously. Before I appeared he said to the boys,
“We have with us this evening Mr. Marshall P. Wilder. How many of you
know him?”
Fully three-quarters of that great assemblage raised their hands. It
was quite flattering to be so well known in a “profession” as cautious
and exclusive as theirs. I found my audience so quick, appreciative and
responsive that instead of restricting myself to ten minutes, I learned
afterward that I had talked an hour and thirty-five minutes!
[Illustration: Laughter was not Part of the Daily Exercises.]
It may be argued by some skeptics that these boys and young men,
being prisoners, were grateful for any entertainment that would break
the monotony of their daily routine, but I prefer to believe their
appreciation was due entirely to their native cleverness. It takes brains
to place and accomplish anything, whether legal or illegal, and prisoners
of the class that is sent to the Reformatory have proved their ability
to think, or they would not be there. There are thousands of clever men
who are good, and of good men who are stupid, but among criminals the
rule is not reversible, for I have yet to see a criminal who is a fool.
I met many interesting and pathetic personalities while engaged in
the institutions. One old man in the Home for Incurables was so badly
paralyzed, that he could move only his hands, and these but a few inches.
He would lie all day on his back, with his hands on his chest, holding
a little switch broken from a peach-tree, with which he would gently
scratch his face and head. This was his only occupation and pleasure;
it was also the limit of his ability to move. Yet this pitiable old
man was always smiling and happy; he would have repelled the idea that
he was unfortunate, for he was constantly recounting his blessings and
comforts—his bed, his food, his kindly attention, and not the least of
all, his little peach-twig.
Another interesting case in the same Home was a feeble minded boy—almost
an imbecile. His physical development was perfect; he was healthy and
very strong, yet his vacant eyes, dropped jaw and frontal expression of
head indicated plainly a sad lack of wits. He was gentle and tractable
and devoted to the matron, who by demonstration had taught him how to
be useful in many ways. His strength was utilized in moving helpless
patients from bed to chairs, or vice versa, and he had been taught to
change the beds and do other work in the men’s ward as neatly as a woman.
[Illustration: It Takes Brains to Accomplish Anything.]
But his chief duty, and one at which he excelled, was to act as baker
for the institution. The matron had taught him, and he had followed her
method so faithfully that every day he dropped a little flour on the
floor and then wiped it up; the matron had chanced to this “aside” in the
first lesson, so it was impossible to convince the boy that this was not
a necessary detail of bread-making. His bread was delicious too; he made
thirty-six loaves every day in a triple oven holding three pans of twelve
loaves each, and never had a failure. Being exact in every way, his
success was always assured.
One old woman, who might have been admitted to this admirable home,
refused to enter it; she said she preferred the Almshouse. She had been
wealthy in her youth but, through unbridled extravagance, had been
reduced to poverty so dire, that for years she had eked out a miserable
existence by selling newspapers. When she became too ill and feeble
to do even this, it was suggested that she should enter the Home for
Incurables, but she refused, saying that she would go to no private
institution, but to the poorhouse, which, when she was rich, she had
helped to maintain. A charitable gentleman who would have helped her, and
to whom she expressed her desire, assured her that she should have her
choice in the matter, foolish though it was. She asked him if instead
of being conveyed in the almshouse wagon, she might be moved in some
other way; her would-be benefactor assured her she should go in his own
carriage, and he himself would be her escort. He invited me to accompany
them, I having already met the old woman and been interested in her. At
the appointed time we called for her and as she stepped into the carriage
she was visibly elated by the thought of once more going through the
streets in a manner like that of her wealthy days. She had dressed for
the occasion in style truly wonderful. Her bonnet, though of startling
construction, commanded attention by its antiquity; a rag of a camel’s
hair shawl was pinned tightly across her narrow chest; a black silk
reticule hung from one thin arm, which was encased in a long suede glove,
boasting the special advantage of leaving her fingers free while her
other hand was covered with a lace mitt of antique fashion.
[Illustration: She had Dressed in a Style Truly Wonderful.]
During the drive she sat stiffly erect, gazed with scorn at people who
were merely walking, and occasionally dropped a stiff, formal speech,
after the manner of polite conversation in her youthful days. When we had
almost reached our destination, she said to my friend her escort:
“For your extreme kindness to me, I should like to bestow upon you a
slight remembrance, something saved from the beautiful things I once
owned.” She put her hand into her reticule and we expected to see a
trinket such as women prize, but she pulled out a pistol and apparently
leveled it at my friend. We gasped, instantly convinced that she had lost
the tiny bit of sanity that was left to her, but in a second we saw that
she was presenting it to, not at, him. It was a pretty toy with a pearl
handle and inlaid with silver, but, like herself, rusty and dilapidated.
It was her last bit of elegance and all the poor creature had to offer in
token of her gratitude.
A touching feature of this Home was the manner of furnishing the rooms
for the pay patients. When the wing for this class of inmates was built
it was believed that a long time would elapse before there would be
money enough in the treasury to furnish the rooms. A kind hearted woman
who visited the house weekly with donations of snuff, tobacco and candy
conceived a clever plan. She had just lost her mother, in whose name she
presented the entire furnishings of her mother’s room to the Home. Word
of this got abroad; other people followed her example and in a short time
the entire wing was furnished in similar manner; so now the visitor
to the home sees a wing of four stories, the halls lined with doors on
each of which is a brass plate engraved with the name of the person who
furnished the room in memory of parent, brother, sister or child.
This is an appropriate place in my story to tell of the largest fee I
ever received for entertaining, for although the giver was not heartily
interested in a public institution, he was _en route_ for one.
I was traveling in the West and looking about the railway car for a
friend, an acquaintance or even some one with whom I might scrape
acquaintance, for I don’t enjoy being alone a long time, when I saw, in
one end of the car, an officer with a prisoner. It did not take long
to see that the prisoner was handcuffed, his feet were shackled to the
bottom of the seat, and behind him were two guards with revolvers in
hand. Evidently the prisoner was of some consequence, although he looked
like a mere boy. He sat with bowed head and a hopeless look on his white
face. His eyes, which in so young a man ought to have been bright and
merry, were downcast and full of gloom.
I ventured over to the party and soon recognized one of the guards, as a
man I had seen in a similar capacity at the Elmira Reformatory. In reply
to my questions about the prisoner, he told me that the youth had been
brought on extradition proceedings from England, after evading capture a
long time. His crime had been peculiarly atrocious and he was now being
taken to Kansas City for trial.
I was sorry for the officer and guards, as well as for the prisoner,
for there can’t be much that’s cheery in hunting down and manacling a
fellow man, no matter how bad he may be. Besides, they looked about as
uncomfortable as the prisoner, so I got off a joke or two to brace them
up. Soon the prisoner raised his head and manifested a trace of interest.
Then I asked if I might try some card tricks on them. Of course I might;
it’s hard to find a man so troubled, that he won’t forget his misery a
moment or two over a card trick.
All the men in the car were soon looking on, but I kept my eye and heart
on the prisoner; no matter what he deserved, it was plain to see what he
needed. The poor wretch became thoroughly aroused from his dejection,
so I sandwiched tricks and stories and saw him “pick up” a little more
after each one. I “played at him,” and him alone, as actors sometimes
do at one man in a theatre audience. It was a big contract, and I was a
small man, but I was bound to see it through. It took two hours of hard
work, but at the end of that time the prisoner was an entirely different
man in appearance. His eyes were bright, the color had come back to his
cheeks, his whole manner had changed; he had forgotten his past and for
the moment he was a man again. When we were near Kansas City, he asked me
if I wouldn’t shake hands with him, and he said that I could never know
what my kindness in the past two hours had been to him. The look he gave
me, as I clasped his manacled hand, was the biggest pay I ever got in my
life.
XIII
“BUFFALO BILL”
He Works Hard but Jokes Harder.—He and I Stir up a Section
of Paris.—In Peril of a Mob.—My Indian Friends in the Wild
West Company.—Bartholdi and Cody.—English Bewilderment
Over the “Wild West” People.—Major “Jack” Burke.—Cody as a
Stage-driver.—Some of His Western Stories.—When He Had the
Laugh on Me.
My acquaintance with Col. William F. Cody—“Buffalo Bill”—dates back to a
time when I was a boy at Hartford and he was an actor in Ned Buntline’s
play “The Prairie Waif.” His life had been strenuous in the extreme ever
since he was thirteen years of age, but neither hardship nor danger had
ever suppressed his inherent merriment and his longing to get a joke out
of something or on somebody.
Our acquaintance was renewed at Rochester, where I had for schoolmate
his only son, Kit Carson Cody, named for a famous scout of fifty years
ago. The death of this boy was a great and lasting grief to his father,
and his memory became more and more a link to bind the Colonel and me
together, so in time we formed a close and lasting friendship. Whenever
we chanced to be in the same city we were together so much that we became
nicknamed “The Corsican Brothers.”
When the “Wild West” Company first went to Paris I was one of Buffalo
Bill’s guests for several weeks. The Paris shopkeepers and theatre
managers had heard of the enormous success of the “Wild West” in England
and some of them, who feared it might divert money which otherwise would
find its way into their pockets, arranged for a powerful “clacque” on the
opening day, not to applaud but to disturb the performance and discourage
Cody, so that he would leave the city. They did not know their man, so
they had only their expense for their pains. Besides, even a Paris mob,
which is said to be the meanest in the world, would think twice before
“demonstrating” much in the face of an arena full of Indians and crack
shots. The performance went on with little or no annoyance, but after
it ended a great crowd burst into the ring and almost caused a riot.
Suddenly another French peculiarity was manifested; a single gendarme
worked his way to the centre of the crowd and fired a bullet from his
pistol; in an instant the multitude dispersed. The worst of the French
people respect the majesty of the law—when it is backed by firearms.
I soon duplicated, as well as I could, the Colonel’s plains costume,
which he always wore in the streets as an advertisement. I too appeared
in buckskin trousers, fringed leggings, pistol belt and broad sombrero
hat. I must have looked like an animated mushroom, but the Parisians were
quick to note the resemblance and to dub me “le petit Buffalo Bill.” Cody
himself generally called me his “stove-in-pard.”
One morning the Colonel went out to be shaved and asked me to accompany
him. As both were dressed in wild west costume, to which the colonel
had added a pair of pistols and a knife, a large crowd followed on and
lingered about the shop we entered. A Parisian shopkeeper generally has
his wife with him, to act as cashier and general manager, and the barber
to whom we had gone had a chic and attractive wife, regarding whom Cody
and I exchanged admiring remarks in English, at the risk of the barber
understanding us and becoming disagreeable. Then Cody seated himself and
asked the barber:
“Do you speak English?”
“Non, m’sieur,”—with apologetic eyebrows and shoulders. The colonel
thrust his hands into his long brown curls and said:
“I want you to put a little oil on my hair and rub it in; compre?”
“Oui, oui, m’sieur.”
Then Bill asked: “Marsh, what is French for shave?”
My French was as limited as his, so I replied:
“‘Razoo,’ I guess.”
“And I want you to razoo my face, compre?”
“Oui, oui, m’sieur.”
The barber shaved his customer, but he had mistaken the sign language of
Cody’s first order, for he raised a pair of shears to clip the Colonel’s
long hair—one of his most treasured possessions and features; in fact,
like Samson of Biblical fame, his hair was the secret of his strength.
Just as the barber lifted a lock and posed the shears for the first snip
Bill saw the situation in a mirror. With a cowboy yell that would have
made a Comanche Indian green with envy he sprang from the chair to save
his hair. The barber, who had been working with bated breath, appalled by
the savage appearance of his customer, dropped his shears and his knees
shook, as, with chattering teeth, he begged for mercy. The wife’s screams
added to the confusion, the lingering crowd pressed in and was reinforced
by a gendarme who began a rapid fire of questions in excited French. No
explanations that were offered in either tongue were comprehended by the
parties who spoke the other language and, as the barber seemed consumed
with a desire to get rid of us, we hurried away in a cab, the barber’s
wife following us with a torrent of imprecations—and she so pretty, too!
One day, while the show was at Paris, we saw a distinguished looking man
pressing against the rope stretched around Colonel Cody’s tent. When he
found opportunity he said, in excellent English:
[Illustration: “We hurried away.”]
“Pardon me, Colonel Cody, but I should like to speak to you. I have
many friends in your great country—a country for which I have a sincere
admiration.”
“I am very glad to see you,” the colonel replied wearily; he had heard
this same speech so often. “May I ask your name?”
“My name is Bartholdi,” modestly replied the sculptor whose magnificent
statue, “Liberty Enlightening the World,” has endeared him to Americans.
From the moment he made himself known to Cody he “owned the show.”
Indians generally manifest extreme suspicion of white men, but while I
was Colonel Cody’s guest I made friends of some of the chiefs and braves,
especially Red Shirt and Flat Iron. The former, a famous scout and
warrior, has been called “The Red Napoleon” for his knowledge of military
tactics, his commanding dignity and reserve. He has a fine physique, and
a noble head, while his bearing is absolutely regal. He has always been
friendly to the whites, and was a valuable ally of Buffalo Bill in many
raids against his unruly brethren.
I knew Red Shirt was fond of me, but no one else would have imagined it
from his manner toward me, for your Indian friend does not slap you on
the back or buttonhole you with a joke, after the manner of white men.
Later I learned of the earnestness of his regard through a story told
me by Bronco Bill, the Wild West Company’s interpreter. It seems that,
after Red Shirt had left the company for a few months and returned to his
reservation, he found an old illustrated paper in which was a portrait
he thought was mine. He could not verify it, for he was unable to read.
Although the winter had set in and snow was deep on the ground he rode
twenty miles to the home of Bronco Bill to ask if the face was mine.
Being assured that it really was a picture of his friend, he took it back
home and fastened it to the wall of his cabin—an unusual proceeding, for
an Indian regards it beneath his dignity to indicate emotion, even among
his own people.
When the Wild West was last at Madison Square Garden, I again met
Red Shirt and Flat Iron. The former was very glad to see me, so the
interpreter told me, and I had reason to believe it, but no bystander
would have imagined it from his reserved manner and impassive face. Flat
Iron, who is an exception to almost all Indians in having a twinkling
eye and vivacious manner, rapidly asked me many questions: was I
stronger?—had I a squaw?—etc. The fact that I was unmarried had worried
him so greatly in the earlier days of our friendship that he offered to
select me a charming squaw from among his own grandchildren.
[Illustration: “He offered to select me a charming squaw.”]
Flat Iron is a shrewd financier, with a money getting system peculiarly
his own, which he had worked successfully on many whites. In New York, he
sometimes walked alone, in a street full of people, muttering to himself
and staring at the sky. When he saw that he had excited curiosity—and
an Indian can see out of the back of his head as well as out of both
sides of it, he would stop, place several nickels,—never pennies, on the
sidewalk, and make solemn “passes” over them, as if doing an incantation
act. Occasionally he would look aside, and indicate by signs that the
observers should add to the number of nickels. These additions he would
arrange in geometric figures, which always lacked some point or line.
Bystanders would supply the deficiency, the coins would be rearranged,
still with missing parts, and the mysterious passes would continue,
accompanied by solemn gazes heavenward. This pantomime would continue
until the crowd had parted with all its nickels; then suddenly the old
man would pick up the entire collection, stow it in his pocket and stalk
off as jauntily as a broker who has succeeded in unloading a lot of
wild-cat stocks on a confiding public.
While the Wild West was at Manchester I had my hundredth laugh—perhaps
it was my thousandth, at the density of intelligent Englishmen’s
ignorance regarding American people and ways. Colonel Cody, his partner
and business manager, “Nate Salsbury,” were standing together, when an
Englishman approached and asked for Mr. Salsbury. Nate asked what he
could do for him and the man replied:
“I’m the Greffic.”
“The wha-at?”
“The Greffic—the London Greffic. I make sketches, don’cher know?”
“Oh! The London _Graphic_? All right. Sail right in. You might begin with
Cody.”
“And who is Cody?” the artist asked.
“Why, Cody is Buffalo Bill!”—Salsbury almost screamed, he was so amazed.
“And does he speak English?”