MY MONOLOGUE 



necessarily a certain amount of nervousness as to 

 whether I should make good or not. The first en- 

 gagement was at Hammerstein's. The question of 

 what I should wear was debated and at last it was 

 decided that evening clothes would be the most 

 suitable. It went all right and business was excellent, 

 I used to get a good number of laughs^ — more I suppose 

 on account of Cohan's witty lines ; at all events the 

 credit must be left to him. It is a pity that I cannot 

 now remember the whole of the monologue. Stories 

 about England were told, not altogether to boost the 

 country I had ridden in. Little yarns about some of 

 the antiquated customs of the old country nearly always 

 go down to a mixed audience at a vaudeville show in 

 America. There was one story about the English 

 national game of cricket. I had to describe how a 

 man went to the wicket with his bat when he was a 

 boy, and stayed there until his whiskers began to grow, 

 and on and on year after year until he became grey 

 and was succeeded by his son. It was a gibe against 

 the slowness of the game as compared with the thrilling 

 quickness of baseball. I shall always think that with 

 a few more demonstrations of baseball the taste for it 

 in England would have been started. Everything is 

 crowded into about three hours, and some day even 

 Englishmen will refuse to be entertained by a struggle 

 which is not decided for three days — and then some- 

 times not finished. 



Another story I told concerned my advice to the 

 great James Rowe about a horse race. I was supposed 

 to say to him : " You had better have a bet on my 

 mount to-day," and he refused, telling me that I had 

 told him to back the same animal a few days before 

 and he had lost five hundred dollars. Then I brought 

 down the house by telling how I ultimately convinced 



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