Robert had been ill for nearly a month with tonsilitis, and nothing kept him contented but pictures of his favorite, Charlie Chaplin, clipped from the pages of the motion-picture pictorials.
One morning, as his mother sat beside his bed, he studied earnestly a full-page drawing of the million-dollar comedian.
"Mother," he asked, "will Charlie Chaplin go to heaven?"
"Why, yes—I hope so," answered the somewhat astonished parent.
"Gee! won't the Lord have some fun then!" was Robert's comment.
Sweeping his long hair back with an impressive gesture the visitor faced the proprietor of the film studio. "I would like to secure a place in your moving-picture company," he said.
"You are an actor?" asked the film man.
"Yes."
"Had any experience acting without audiences?"
A flicker of sadness shone in the visitor's eyes as he replied:
"Acting without audiences is what brought me here!"
It was a death-bed scene, but the director was not satisfied with the hero's acting.
"Come on!" he cried. "Put more life in your dying!"
"Pa, what's an actor?"
"An actor, my boy, is a person who can walk to the side of a stage, peer into the wings at a group of other actors waiting for their cues, a number of bored stage hands and a lot of theatrical odds and ends and exclaim, 'What a lovely view there is from this window!'"
"There were two actresses in an early play of mine," said an author, "both very beautiful; but the leading actress was thin. She quarreled one day at rehearsal with the other lady, and she ended the quarrel by saying, haughtily: 'Remember, please, that I am the star.'
"'Yes, I know you're the star,' the other retorted, eyeing with an amused smile the leading actress's long, slim figure, 'but you'd look better, my dear, if you were a little meteor!'"
INTERVIEWER—"What is your wife's favorite dish?"
HUSBAND OF FAMOUS MOVIE ACTRESS—"In the magazines it is peach-bloom fudge-cake with orangewisp salad, but at home it is tripe and cabbage."—Puck.
The actress stood before her mirror, in doublet and hose, and regarded her thin legs anxiously.
"I'm not exactly a poem," said she, "but I may pass for heroic verse."
ADVERTISING
The Question is How Much More?
TO RENT—In private home, a large, handsomely furnished front room; also a medium-sized one; every convenience; centrally and very choicely located; rent more than reasonable. Address, etc.—
Advertising is the test of integrity; the proof of integrity; that transmits an ever-increasing confidence to both producer and purchaser.
"I won't pay one cent for my advertising this week," declared the store-keeper angrily to the editor of the country paper. "You told me you'd put the notice of my shoe-polish in with the reading-matter."
"And didn't I do it?" inquired the editor.
"No, sir!" roared the advertiser. "No, sir, you did not! You put it in the column with a mess of poetry, that's where you put it!"
"Paw, what is an advertisement?"
"An advertisement is the picture of a pretty girl eating, wearing, holding or driving something that somebody wants to sell."
A violinist was bitterly disappointed with the account of his recital printed in the paper of a small town.
"I told your man three or four times," complained the musician to the owner of the paper, "that the instrument I used was a genuine Stradivarius, and in his story there was not a word about it, not a word."
Whereupon the owner said with a laugh:
"That is as it should be. When Mr. Stradivarius gets his fiddles advertised in my paper under ten cents a line, you come around and let me know."
"Oh, we called about the flat advertised."
"Well, I did mean to let it, but since I've read the house-agent's description of it, I really feel I can't part with it."
CLASSIFIED AD MANAGER—"Your advertisement begins: 'Wanted: Silent Partner.'"
ADVERTISER—"Yes, that's right."
CLASSIFIED AD MANAGER—"Do you want this placed under Business Opportunities or Matrimony?"
"Say, Jim," said the friend of the taxicab-driver, standing in front of the vehicle, "there's a purse lying on the floor of your car."
The driver looked carefully around and then whispered: "Sometimes when business is bad I put it there and leave the door open. It's empty, but you've no idea how many people'll jump in for a short drive when they see it."
Recently the L. P. Ross Shoe Company inserted an advertisement in a Rochester paper for vampers and closers-up. Among the answers received was one from a young lady who signed herself Miss Mabelle Jones and gave her address as General Delivery, Rochester. The letter said in part:
"Gentlemen: I have seen your ad for vampires and close-ups and I would like the job. I have been studying to vamp for several years and have been practising eye work for a long while. My gentlemen friends tell me that I have the other movie vamps backed off the map. I have made a particular study of Theda Bara. I don't know much about close-ups, but suppose I could learn. I have a good form, swell brown eyes, and a fine complexion."
"If you would like, I will call and show you what I can do. I have been looking for a vampire job, but never saw no ads in the papers before."
"Yours,"
"MABELLE JONES."
"P.S.—Do you furnish clothes for your vampires? I have just come to Rochester and so I haven't got many clothes."—Rochester Herald.
His Little Ad
There was a man in our town
And he was wondrous wise;
He swore (it was his policy)
He would not advertise.
But one day he did advertise,
And thereby hangs a tail,
The "ad" was set in quite small type,
And headed "Sheriff's Sale."
Burton Holmes, the lecturer,
