CHAPTER X

MELODRAMA BECOMES COMEDY


Every race gets a nickname in America. A Frenchman is a "frog,"
a negro a "coon" and a Welshman a "goat." All the schoolboys who
were not Welsh delighted in teasing us by applying the
uncomplimentary nickname. This once resulted at the Sharon
operahouse, in turning a dramatic episode into a howling farce.

I was acting as a super in the sensational drama She, by H.
Rider Haggard. Two Englishmen were penetrating the mysterious
jungles of Africa, and I was their native guide and porter. They
had me all blacked up like a negro minstrel, but this wasn't a
funny show, it was a drama of mystery and terror. While I was
guiding the English travelers through the jungle of the local
stage, we penetrated into the land of the wall-eyed cannibals.

The cannibals captured me and prepared to eat me in full view
of the audience while the Englishmen behind the trees looked on
in horror. The cannibals, who were also supers led by an actor of
the "troupe," set up a hot pot to boil my bones in. I was bound
hand and foot, while the cannibals, armed with spears, danced
around me in a heathen ceremony, chanting a voodoo chant and
reciting a rigmarole by which cannibals are supposed to make
their human feast on a sacred rite. As they danced about me in a
circle, they sang:

"Is it an ox? Him-yah, him-yah." And they jabbed their spears