about two mont’s. The words was either throwed together by the stage carpenter or else took down by a stenographer outdoors durin’ a drizzle. Anyway, they ain’t nobody claims them. Every oncet in three or four pages they forget themself and rhyme. You got to read each verse over two or three times before you learn what they’re hintin’ at, but the management gives you plenty o’ time to do it between acts and still sneak a couple o’ hours’ sleep.
The first act opens up somewheres in Spain, about the corner o’ Chicago Avenue and Wells. On one side o’ the stage they’s a pill mill where the employees is all girls, or was girls a few years ago. On the other side they’s a soldiers’ garage where they keep the militia in case of a strike. In the back o’ the stage they’s a bridge, but it ain’t over no water or no railroad tracks or nothin’. It’s prob’ly somethin’ the cat dragged in.
Well, the soldiers stands out in front o’ the garage hittin’ up some barber shops, and pretty soon a girl blows in from the hero’s home town, Janesville or somewheres. She runs a few steps every little w’ile and then stops, like the rails was slippery. The soldiers sings at her and she tells them she’s came to look for Don Joss that run the chop-suey dump up to Janesville, but when they shet down on him servin’ beer he quit and joined the army. So the soldiers never heard o’ the bird, but they all ask her if they won’t do just as good, but she says nothin’ doin’ and skids off the stage. She ain’t no sooner gone when the Chinaman from Janesville and some more soldiers and some alley rats comes in to help out the singin’. The book says that this new gang o’ soldiers was sent on to relieve the others, but if anything happened to wear out the first ones it must of took place at rehearsal. Well, one o’ the boys tells Joss about the girl askin’ for him and he says: “Oh, yes; that must be the little Michaels girl from up in Wisconsin.”
So pretty soon the whistle blows for noon and the girls comes out o’ the pill mill smokin’ up the mornin’ receipts and a crowd o’ the unemployed