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Show PRIMROSE PLACED MONUMENT AT HIS OLD "PAL'S" GRAVE 4H"H"H"1"M i'M-i-H-I-M-l I 'M-H-fr X "BILLY" RICE. Died March 1. 1902. "I Have Cashed in Mv Last White i Check. I Will Have to Go .. 4- 'Way Back to the End and Sit Down." . A few weeks ago. while playing an engagement en-gagement In Hot Springs, Ark., George Primrose and his minstreln went to a cemetery two 'miles from town and assembled as-sembled around a grave at which stood a tombstone with the foregoing Inscription. Primrose covered the grave with violets' then the entire company, their heads bared, sang "Nearer, My God, to Thee" and "Good-bye.." "Billy" Rice, the veteran minstrel, who died In Hot Springs, was "end man" for Primrose & West's minstrels for many years. He died In poverty. "Few persons, unless they have visited the, cemetery, know that Inscription on Rice's grave." George Primrose, who is appearing at the Salt Lake Theater, said "The words carved on .the stone are the last ones Rice spoke. He alwavs used slang in conversation and telling" stories and those words spoken by him while dying dy-ing were typical. "About two years ago. when In Hot Springs. I visited the grave and found no monument had been put up. Only a little pine board, with the name, "Rice" marked the grave. Rice's relatives are poor, his burial expenses were paid with an appropriation from the actors' fund I ordered the monument and had the lni scrlptlon placed upon It. 'Billy you know,, was in 'blackface' thirty-seven years.- At one time, he was wealthy.' J i . |