A musical number followed, introducing banjo playing by Luke, a guitar solo by Henshaw, a cornet solo by a lad named Dixon, and then a trio by the three. Then came fancy dumbbell exercises and club-swinging by three members of the gymnasium club, and this too went very well, the exercisers keeping time to a march played by the orchestra.
The next number was Shadow's monologue, and when that youth came out everybody had to laugh before he said a word. He was dressed as an extreme dude, with big checked coat and trousers, fancy colored vest, a tremendous watch-chain, and paste diamond stud, very pointed patent leather shoes, a high standing collar, and a highly-polished silk hat.
"Ladies and gentlemen, boys, girls, and fellow-weepers," he commenced with a profound bow and a flourish of his silk hat, "I have been asked an important question, namely, What is the difference between a cat and a shotgun? Well, I don't know, excepting that both can go off, but it's only the feline that comes back. Now, that puts me in mind of a story I once heard while traveling in Egypt with Noah, looking for a typewriter which was lost overboard from the ark. A little boy went to a hardware store for his dad and hung around waiting to be waited on. At last a clerk asked, 'Well, little boy, what do you want?' 'Oh,' says the little boy, 'I want a fire engine, an' a hobby horse, an' a automobile, an' a lot o' things, but papa he wants a bottle of glue, an' he says if it don't stick he'll stick you for it!' Now, that's the same boy who went to the courthouse to get courtplaster for his mother and then went down to the henhouse to look for egg plants."
There was considerable applause over this opening, and Shadow continued:
"That hand-clapping puts me in mind of another story. A would-be actor had joined a barn-storming company, and the company opened in a little place on Staten Island where the mosquitoes are manufactured by the ton, gross, or hogshead, just as you want 'em. Well, as soon as the play commenced, the would-be actor thought he heard a lot of applause. Says he to the scene-shifter: 'We've got 'em a-going, haven't we?' 'I don't know if you have or not,' answered the scene-shifter. 'I know the mosquitoes have some of 'em a-going, by the way they're slapping at 'em!' Well, that company busted up and the would-be actor had to come home on a trolley-car because he couldn't afford the train. He had only a nickel, and that he put into his mouth, and all at once it went down. 'What's the matter?' asked the conductor. 'I--I swallowed my nickel--the only one I had!' gasped the would-be actor. 'Never mind, I'll ring it up,' said the conductor, and he did. And then the actor didn't know if he was a nickel in or a nickel out."