قراءة كتاب Step Lively! A Carload of the Funniest Yarns that Ever Crossed the Footlights
تنويه: تعرض هنا نبذة من اول ١٠ صفحات فقط من الكتاب الالكتروني، لقراءة الكتاب كاملا اضغط على الزر “اشتر الآن"
Step Lively! A Carload of the Funniest Yarns that Ever Crossed the Footlights
hard and she will fry it;
To cook I know she'll never learn,
Why will she try it?
He means, he says, to write another,
The greatest fortitude it took
To hear it read. I had to smother
Some awful yawns. I'd have to call
The man a silly fool who'd buy it;
But then poor Jones can't write at all,
Why will he try it?
And does so at the least persuasion
Or none at all—an awful thing,
I know by one most sad occasion.
Her voice might have some sort of use
If to saw filing she'd apply it,
But singing! She has no excuse.
Why will she try it?
To do the things they're most unfit for—
To preach—to paint—we know they can't—
And what they can don't care a bit for.
Perhaps we, too, our callings miss,
But tell us so and we'll deny it.
We still will fool with that or this,
Why will we try it?
Good deal of truth there, you'll admit.
But speaking of Coney Island, many's the happy hour I've spent on its historic sands. And perhaps I've done my share at amusing the thousands who throng there on a hot holiday.
Yes, I was the Mikado of the seaside.
That was in the days when I never dreamed I should be standing before so brilliant an audience as I see before me tonight, in such a magnificent theatre, and under the auspices of such a generous-hearted proprietor—that means another fifty per! No, no, it was in the dear, dead days, when the world was young. It makes me weep to think how we fleeced—I mean entertained—those Coney Islanders. We gave a little show on the sands, and we had with us one jolly old actor who only once attempted playing in the legitimate. I was curious about that "once."
When in a confiding mood I confessed that I had heard of his aspirations, he chuckled and admitted that years back, growing disgruntled with amusing people he had boldly essayed the role of Hamlet.
"Well," I remarked, encouragingly, "I suppose the audience called you to come out before the curtain?"
"Called me," he said, soberly, "why, they just dared me!"
Then there was Signor Tossi, the wonderful diver, who for a stipend plunged from an elevated platform into a tank of water.
"See here," I said to him boldly one day, "the danger about this drop isn't much—how have you got the nerve to call it a leap for life?"
"Why, don't I make my living by it? See?"
I guess he was right, don't you?
You can just believe a Coney Island audience doesn't fancy being held up or swindled. But they put up with a good deal of it just the same.
