Show A STAGE jSUXAGERS STORIES firavcl ierfrij S With a Pine Pick Ixe Flowers in IXotAir Blust S We were playing in a Georgia town one night said i l Manager McConnell that was when Lawrence Barrett and J were starring together Lawrence was playing Hamlet and I was doing the skull or some other part like that I was property man at that time and I ransacked ran-sacked that Georgia town for a pickaxe to be used by the gravedigger and couldnt find one There was nothing else to do but to make one I had a strong jackknife so I whittled a pickaxe out of two pieces of soft pine and pasted I tilfoil over the blade of it It looked like a pickaxe but it weighed only about a pound and S who was playing the gravedigger that night gave away the whole thing When the curtain I went up S was in the grave spitting on his hands He took the pick by the end of the handle and let the blade drop on the bottom of the grave It was so light bounced about three feet The people in front shouted Then he picked S the thing up > betwcen his thiti4nb and < finger and worked that way letting it bounce at every stroke It looked about as if he was picking at the bottom with apiece a-piece of straw Then he leaned against the edge of the grave and picked his teeth with it and scratched his ear with the point all the time holding it between IIIB thumb and one linger mind you and singing away as sober as you please Next night Barrett and I gave Hum let in a hall over a butchers shop where a rufiian below stains kept smashing up sausages all evening The place was frightfully hot and a row of htounpipiM ran under the static When S jumped into the grave to do his digging act he was almost knocked over by the heat that played around his legs The hot air came through the trap in a regular gust He shoveled out the skull and Lot away from there in alum v Then the funeral procession came in bringing Ophelia on a tray and when they put the bier over the trap and began to lower it the hot air blew up the corners of the pall and showed that there was no Ophelia here However they went on with the show and the queen came up as solemn as you please shed one or two weeps and began to drop flowers into the grave ft happened hap-pened that the Mowers were made of tissue paper and just as the queen aid Sweets to the sweet the hot blast caught thevhole lot of paper leave and roses and they went sailing all over the theatre Some of them < lanced amnml two or three feet above our heads some floated out in front and were caught in the chandelier uul some came down among the audience There was the biggest big-gest kind of a laugh and we had to ring down the curtain Ye there oH nf fun in he show IHHUIP |