So the lady begin lookin’ all over for it and Hatch was goin’ to give it back because he thought it was a shoe catalogue, but he happened to see at the top of it where it says “Price 25 Cents,” so he tossed it in his lap and stuck his hat over it. And the lady kept lookin’ and lookin’ and finally she turned round and looked Hatch right in the eye, but he dropped down inside his collar and left her wear herself out. So when she’d gave up I says somethin’ about I’d like to have a drink.
“Let’s go,” says Hatch.
“No,” I says. “I don’t want it bad enough to go back to town after it. I thought maybe we could get it sent up to the room.”
“I’m goin’ alone then,” says Hatch.
“You’re liable to miss the second act,” I says.
“I’d never miss it,” says Hatch.
“All right,” says I. “I hope you have good weather.”
So he slipped me the book to keep for him and beat it. So I seen the lady had forgot us, and I opened up the book and that’s how I come to find out what the show was about. I read her all through, the part that was in English, before the curtain went up again, so when the second act begin I knowed what had came off and what was comin’ off, and Hatch and Mrs. Hatch hadn’t no idear if the show was comical or dry. My Missus hadn’t, neither, till we got home and I told her the plot.
Carmen ain’t no regular musical show where a couple o’ Yids comes out and pulls a few lines o’ dialogue and then a girl and a he-flirt sings a song that ain’t got nothin’ to do with it. Carmen ’s a regular play, only instead o’ them sayin’ the lines, they sing them, and in for’n languages so’s the actors can pick up some loose change offen the sale o’ the liberettos. The music was wrote by George S. Busy, and it must of kept him that way