Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1930-07-13

An / think III accept the Terra kind
inUetGtiOn Of yer LordshiP tae dinner. /
MIGHT hoe toritten, but this sGUes me the
stamp" Sir Harry once said to the Vice
roy Of India from the stage, when this
officials presence IN boz recalled to
SIR Harry that he had failed TO ans,Cer
formal dinner limitation.
fun, reared with laughter. 1 had to do that
every performance after that, otherwise some
one would have been sure to call out, What
about the whiSker slider"
A MOTHER incident which took place shortly
before that also sticks in my memory. 1t
was the opening night of a great new theater
As. arrangements were not half finished and
even the lighting wasn't perfect we had to inn
provise our own limelghts with pair of acety-
lene motor headlights hxed up about nine feet
above the stage.
1t wasn't altogether what you might call a
brilliant success, for the light on my left hand
kept going out and had to be relit constantly
by man on ladder. Every one laughed the
more at that saying made the light laugh
and asking where Harry was when it went out
But the real explanation was that the man who
was attending to the lights had smuggled a
friend in behind the stage. This friend in his
excitement kept shifting from one foot to the
other. And whenever it was the other YOU
see, he was standing on the gas tube so the
light went out at once.
This went on until the whole place reeked
Of carbide and the lamplighter was Just STEP
ping up his ladder for the twentieth time
when catastrophe happened. His friend
changed feet again, the gas came along the
tube with rush and the poor wee laddie on
the ladder top came HURTING to the ground
with thump. nearly asphyxiated
1t was In the midst Of my singing my wee
song Love Makes the World a Merry-Go-
Round" that he whirled round ladder and all,
and crashed. You should have heard that au-
dience 1t laughed, cheered shouted for an
encore-and all the while five men were hold
ing the little chap who'd fallen to prevent him
taAing his coat off, in full view of the au-
dience, to his unfortunate pal
Not all my unexpected laughs have been in
the theater, and some of them have been
against myself. Here's one for instance I
was leaving train at a big American sta
ton one day when a battery of enterprsing
cameramen fairly ambushed me. They rushed
me against taxi wanted to enter and so
Unanswered it that placed against the
taxi, with one hand resting upon it. My hand,
though didn't know it, was apparently point
ing to placard. The next morning all the
papers had pictures Of me standing beside
the vehicle gleefuly pointing to a notice which
read, Great Reduction in Fares!"
announcer klno OF shock, though really only
heard Of 1t afterward, was when my advance
man went to Peoria H. to book a theater for
q matinee performance there. The German
proprietor was shy of booking for he aid he
had been let down too often by these guys with
only New York reputation. He wanted
sum down as a guarantee
My advance man was naturally amused and
explained that Harry Lauder was the biggest
thing that had lit the American continent
since Columbus. The German didn't like to
admit that he'd not heard of Columbus
either, So rather reluctantly. he fixed up shar-
ing terms.
He was still restless, though, and when my
advance man was leaving he turned to him,
unable any longer to keep his doubts inside
Say, young feler," he shouted, you amt
never told me the name o. the chap this Lau-
der guys gonna fightr
(Copyright, 1930.)