The Alaska citizen., 1910-12-26
IA Venture in the High C's.S
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around his neck and kissed him
 smack upon the lips, with a quiet enthusiastic declaration, in very
 charming warped English that he
 was "a dear old sing" Bobby, re-
 yerting quickly in mind 10 the fact of the extreme unConventionality of these IcOple. took the occurrence
 quite as matter of course, though
 it embarrassed him somewhat. He rather counted himself prig that
 could not sooner get over this
 habit of embarrassment, and every
 time Madam Villenauve insisted on calling him into her dressing room
 when she was in much more disha- bile than he would have thought
 permissible in ordinary people, he
 felt that same painful lack of SO
 phiStCation.
 At the supper that night, Madam
 Villenauve. with a great show of
 playful indignation, routed Madam
 Kadanoff from her accidental seat
 next to Bobby. and, in giving up the
 seat which she did quite gracefully
 enough, Madam Kadanoff drcpped d
 some remark in choice Russian,
 which, of course. Bobby did not understand, but which Madam Vil-
 lenauve did, for she laughed lit
 tie shrilly and, with an engaging up
 ward smile at Bobby, observed: "I theenk l shall say it Zat Zees so chairming Monsieur Burnit is i soon to marry wiz me; ees eet not.
 monsieur?"
 Whereupon Bobby. with his GUS ] tomary courtesy, replied.
 No gentleman would care to deny such a charming and attractive pos i sibility, Madam Nillenauve.'
 . But the gracious speech was of the l lips alone. and spoken with warn, l ing glare against kidding at the grinning Biff Bates, who had found ! business of urgent importance for ] that night in the city where the l company was booked. Bobby, in ] fact, had begun to tire very much 1 of the whole business. To begin l with. he found the organization a much more expensive one to keep 1 up than he had imagined. The i route. badly laid out, was one of i tremendously long jumps; of his l singers, like other rare and eXpen-
 siye creatures, eXtravagant care must be taken. and not every place 1 that they stopped was so eager for grand opera as it might have been. 1 At the end of the three weeks he
 was able to compute that he had
 lost about a thousand dollars a
 week, and in the fourth week they i struck an engagement so fruitless
 that even the cheerful Carayaggio ] became dismal.
 Its a sure enough frost" she cCnfided to Bobby; but cheer up.
 for the worst is yet to come. Your
 route sheet for the next two months
 looks like a morgue to me, and un-
 less you interlope a few coon songs
 in Tannhauser and some song and l dance specialties betWe the acts
 If Les HugHenots you're gone. You know l used to sing this route in
 musical cor edy, and, on the level,
 I've got fine part waiting for
 ma right now in the Pink Canary ] like this highbow music all right, but the people that come to hear
 it make me so sad You're a good
 sport, though, and as long as you
 need me I'll stick"
 Thanks" said Bobby sincerely.
 "lt's ! pleasure to speak to a real human being once in a while, even
 if you don't offer any encourage ment. However, we'll not be buried till we're dead, notwithstanding l that we now enter upon the grave yard route"
 ! Doleful experience, however, con- 1 firmed The Caravaggio's gloomy 1 prophecy. They embarked now upon
 a season of one and two and three night stands that gave Bobby more | of the real discomforts of life than he had ever before dreamed possi- i ble. To close a performance at eleven, to pack and hurry for a i twelye-thirty train, to ride until five o'clock in the morning a distance too short for sleep and too long to stay awake - to tumble into a ho-
 tel at six and sleep until noon, this was one program; to close a perfor- nance at eleven, to wait up for a four o'clock train, to ride till eight and get into a hotel at nine, with
 yitally necessary rehearsal at two, was another program. either one of which wore on health and temper and purse alike. The losses
 now exceeded two thousand dollars a week. Moreover, the frequent visits of Biff Bates and his constant bait ing of SignOr Ricardo had driven the great tenor to such a point of dis | traction that one night, being near
 New York, he drew his pay and de- | parted without notice. There was no
 use, in spite of Monsieur Noire's fran
 tic insistence, in trying to make the public believe that the lank Dulce
 was the fat Ricardo moreover, i'm
 ediately upon his arrival in New
 York, Signor Ricardo let 1t be known
 that he had left the Neapolitan com. pany, so the prestige of the com pany fell off at once, for the "coun. try" press pays pretty sharp attention
 to these things.
 A letter from Johnson at just this | time had its influence upon Bobby,
 who now was not in an antagonistic but an humble mood and quite ripe l for advice. MT. Johnson had just conferred with MT. Bates upon his re. turn from a visit to the Neapolitan company, and MT. Bates had detail ed to MT. Johnson much that he had seen with his own eyes, and
 much that The Caravaggio had told
 him. MT. Johnson, thereupon, beg
 ging pardon for the presumption, deemed this a fitting time, from what
 he had heard, to forward Bobby the
 inclosed letter, which, in its gray
 envelope, had been left behind by Bobby's father: