No. XXXIX.
(_From_ JAMES J. SALTONTALE, _of New York City_.)
_KAISER WILLIAM_,--I guess you'll remember who I am when I tell you that
the Jay-Jay Lecture Agency and the Pushalong Dramatic Show Company were
invented by me and that I'm the sole possessor of these two world-wide
organisations. I wasn't always in with the high-brow crowd of the
lecturing business. To tell you the truth I began quite low down with a
six-legged pig that could spell out the word "pork" by touching the
letters with his snout on a big cardboard alphabet. He didn't last long.
Times were hard during his second winter, and--well, I never knew till
then how much bacon there is to a pig, even when it's a learned one with
six legs to it. It was always some trouble tying on them two extra legs,
and it was nervous work watching them while the show was open to see
they didn't work loose. So on the whole I wasn't altogether put into
mourning when old six-legs joined the dear departed and left me free to
speculate in Mexican dwarfs and a Bolivian giantess with a rich
contralto voice.
After that we rose to lions and tigers and a very massive elephant and a
few comic bears and a gorilla from Africa. It was profitable but tiring,
and after I'd saved a dollar or two I was able to retire from the
Mammoth Antediluvian Menagerie and devote myself to Lectures and the
Pushalong stunt, which is living pictures of an historic and improving
sort. So now you remember me, don't you?
Well, the fact is, Kaiser, that a notion's come into my head, and it's
this. When peace comes with all its horrors, you won't want to go on
every day explaining to the German people how you lost the War by being
too kind or by not having prepared yourself enough. And you won't want
to keep telling them why you spent so much time over Verdun and why the
British Fleet didn't make things as easy and comfortable for you as you
reckoned it ought to have done. The German people won't want to listen
to talk of that kind. They've been there and they'll know all about it
without being told. No, what you'll want to do will be to get into a new
atmosphere, with people all round you listening to you just as if you
were the only man in the world. You'll find all that in the United
States if you'll only put yourself in the hands of the Jay-Jay Lecturing
Agency and the Pushalong Dramatic Show Company. We shall engage the
halls and get together the audiences by our unique system of
advertisements, and all you've got to do is to appear at the time fixed
and address the meeting for an hour to an hour and a-half on such
subjects as "Why Belgium started the War," and "How Serbia used Poison
Gas," and "A Dozen Proofs that the _Lusitania_ was Sunk by the British
out of Spite," and "Turkey, the Saviour of the Armenians." There'll be
plenty of others, but these four will do as a good working basis, and we
can fill out the list later on, not forgetting the Monroe Doctrine and
how Germany is going to knock everyone who attacks it into pie.
Then, there can be living pictures of yourself, in all kinds of
uniforms, deciding reluctantly to issue an ultimatum, or packing your
valise for the Front, or leading two millions of men in a charge and
bringing back four millions of prisoners or setting an example to your
people by eating War-bread by the crumb. And then you can wind up the
evening's entertainment by showing yourself making a speech in which you
bring in that bit about the good old German God who has always been your
ally. And then the audience will stream out very devoutly, and all of
them will shake you by the hand and say they're pleased to meet you. I
tell you, WILLIAM HOHENZOLLERN, it will be great, and the dollars will
come pouring in. Leave it all to me, and I'll guarantee a success
that'll make you grateful to me for ever. If we could only get Uncle
FRANCIS JOSEPH to join--but no; that might distract attention from you,
and it's you I'm banking on. All I ask is a miserable twenty per cent.
on the profits. Is it a bargain?