I THINK I’ll chuck this job and go and try To be a supe with her, and by and by Get speakin’ parts to play, and then—who knows?— Be leadin’ man, at last, and wear dude clo’s. I’d drink champagne whenever I was dry, And have a chance to travel up and down Around the country, seein’ every town, And after every act they’d call fer me; All week I’d only work two afternoons, And nearly everywhere I went I’d see My picture in the windows of saloons.
I’d have a stage name that was grand to hear— I think I’d make it Reginald De Vere— Gee! Wouldn’t that loom up great on the bills? They’d never know they cheered fer Eddie Mills When I would get the signal to appear. I’d give her all the beautiful bouquets The girls would send to me at matinées, And when the show was over crowds would stand Outside to watch fer me and her and stare When we come out, and I would take her hand And lead her to our carriage, waitin’ there.
I WENT up-stairs, this morning, when she rung— I guess she must of just got out of bed— It seemed to me her nose looked kind of red; They was a little wad of hair that hung Down in a pigtail on her back; she brung A telegram out to the door, and said: “Well, get a move—good Heavens, are you dead?” Somehow she didn’t seem to look so young.
I can’t help kind of wonderin’ to-day What made her look so queer; it seems as though There’s something that is gone. I’d like to know If all the ones that’s beautiful when they Get on their riggin’ and are fixed up gay Ain’t much but framework when they’ve gone at night And safely locked themselves in out of sight And laid what ain’t growed on to them away.
When me and Mike, the porter, were alone I got to tellin’ him about my thoughts— Mike’s had two wives, and so, of course, knows lots. He told me in a kind of sollum tone: “Me boy, a woman cr-rathure’s like a shtone— At laste some women ar-re—Whin dr-ressed they’re foine, But whin they ain’t ye’ll ha-ardly see a soign Av beauty that ye’d ta-ake to be their own.”
IT’S all off now. She’s gone out West somewhere— The papers say to South Dakota—there She’s got things fixed to get divorced, they claim. It seems that Mrs. Pickleham’s her name In private life, instead of Miss Le Claire. Her father runs a dray in Buffalo, That’s what the papers say: I s’pose they know. I wonder why it always has to be That everything you think is great before You know about it, when you get to see Just how it is don’t seem so grand no more?