The Days of a Man 



1892 



The 



audience 

 reassured 



Successful 

 vaudeville 



ford. As a matter of fact, the faculty of the first 

 few years contained a very large percentage of 

 college athletes. 



At another time, dramatic action being interrupted 

 by a loud and irrelevant noise, "That's only the 

 president falling off his bicycle," remarked one of 

 the actors reassuringly. Like most of the faculty, 

 I was learning to ride the wheel on the old asphalt 

 pavement of the Inner Court, and being a "heavy- 

 weight," was fair game. (Somewhat later, when the 

 bicycle age was fully established, half a thousand 

 student machines stood daily about the walls of 

 the Quad.) In another skit, Uncle John, our local 

 Ananias, appeared in person, explaining to a casual 

 tourist that the small banana plants in the Quad- 

 rangle were young cocoa trees, which grew "fifty 

 feet high in summer, and gave the students all the 

 coconuts they could eat." 



One of Encina's most successful entertainments 

 was a vaudeville show. Among other effective 

 numbers, the performers gave a perfectly costumed 

 ballet, danced by several long-legged, husky football 

 heroes fairly bursting from their bodices. One, in- 

 deed, did burst as the stepping got brisker, and the 

 "Queen," Tarn McGrew, a picturesque figure from 

 Honolulu, was more compelling than ever in the 

 new role. On the same occasion "Calliope Cardi- 

 nale" alias "Charlie" Field a tall and slender 

 prima donna, made her appearance. Attired in an 

 elegant and decidedly decollete gown of Stanford red, 

 long cardinal-colored silk gloves and hose, and 

 voluminous white lacy petticoats, the whole topped 

 by an elaborate blond coiffure, the singer con- 

 tributed several florid songs in a fine falsetto. To- 



