Riverview Military Academy - Orbit Yearbook (Poughkeepsie, NY)

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THE 19l6 RIVERVIEW ORBIT erstwhile of the Dutchess, stepped from the wings and announced in honeyed tones that Mr. Smith, whom we had just seen in pictures, would favor us with a personal appearance. He drew back, the drums blared, but no Smith came mincing out. The audience, in a fever of excitement, was forced to wait Eve long minutes before he came rushing on. You will forgive me , he said, but I just fell in love again-my, what a queen l We forgave him, as they always did at school, and he went on: -But such a practical audience-I had prac- tically forgotten you, as I do practically all of my practical audiences. Now, I want to tell you a little about my work , etc., etc. Leslie Hill was the basis of all his acting, so he said. This famous part had become ingrained into his very soul-. The house went wild. His efforts had borne fruit. Schwartz, Marvellous Mathematieiann, said the sign. Well , thought I to myself, t'Sehwartz mathematics always were marvellous. Ned had changed greatly. He was taller- and thinner. He stood before us, clothed in black. His assistant was dressed to represent the goddess of memory. Schwartz must have been feeling a bit under the weather, for twice he failed to add up a ten- digit column of figures in less than three seconds, and there was a forgetful look in his eye. To show that he was an adept at all branches of mathe- matics, he balanced two spheres in his hands so that they were parallel, a truth which he had maintained in Solid Geometry. At the close of Ned's act a lamentable accident occurred. As he stood bowing at the front of the stage, the rapidly descending curtain caught him unawarcs. They bore his senseless form sad- ly away to Vassar hospital, while the Hmovie curtain fell quickly to quell the excitement. Comedy succeeded tragedy, for the picture was Charlie Chaplin . Imagine my surprise, how- ever, to recognize in Charlie's right-hand man- Clink . It was hc, he who received all the kicks in the stomach and had all the plates broken over his head. He was the goat. I rejoiced. I had been his room-mate for two years, and I had always been the goat before. When Charlie hit him in the face with an egg, it reminded me of Clink using his massage cream. When Charlie turned the hose on him, it brought to mind the time when DceK fainted on Pizie's bed.

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THE 1916 RIVERVIEW ORBIT Passcrs-by . It was very pathetic. In re- sponse to the applause he gave a concluding speech which began- Long practice alone has made my tongue so supple and my wit so bril- 1iant. i He was wrong, the practice had not been alone, it had been down at table-he was wrong in the other things, too. I eagerly awaited the next act, which was billed as Thomas E. Caruso . My suspicions were aroused by the sign and confirmed when Tom Parker appeared on the stage, dragging a piano after him. On the piano was a banner, Hyde Park. After dressing the piano and giving Front ! Tom took his place at the keyboard and began- I stood on the bridge at midnight . He gave us all his old favorites- Absent , ' ' Good-bye , I kissed her twenty times or more, but I alas am only four -this he had evidently rearranged since he sang it in school-and Ein Feste Burg . He pounded the bass so hard in the flagellation of this piece that several keys were splintered and a new piano had to be provided. Throughout his act were visible traces, only half subdued, of the same gestures and expres- sions that Tom had put to such good advantage in impersonating Mr. Kelley from Kalamazoo . I thrilled with pleasure at recognizing them, for I alone knew, their real source. As Tom was bowing after his last song, Harry stuck his head out of the wings and yelled I didn't know he Caruso . Tommy threw the piano stool at him, but at this critical juncture his basketball eye failed him and he missed his mark. Can this, too, be one of my old friends? I said aloud, as the placards announced Rollo Rivoli . So Sullivan was appearing as a quick- change artist! He lolled lazily onto the stage attired as a traveling salesman, but nobody was fooled for a minute. After setting down the dress suit case he was carrying, he walked off, only to reappear twenty minutes later as Dicken's Tiny Tim. This grotesquerie made a belated hit. He withdrew, and, only fifteen minutes later this time, came on again as Victor Hugo. In this guise he recited in French seven verses each be- ginning with Est-ce que , He bowed again and the insomniacs applauded as the curtain fell. His act had been a restful one. After Sullivan's act, the manager of the thea- tre, in whom I was surprised to see Mr. Clancy,

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THE 1916 RIVERVIEW ORBIT It was Clink here, there, and everywhereg al- ways reminiscent of the former days when Clink galloped his way through prep. school with his ever-ready wit. The picture ended, and the audience sar- dined its way out of the theatre, laughing tear- fullv. As I shouldered my way through the crowd, I heard a voice behind me saying-' 'You know, the long drink of water opposite Chaplin, he was in town today: came over from California with this guy Smith. Ahg good news, DeKlyn was in town. I hurried around to the stage entrance and was just in time, the old Riverview gang had just started to leave. We all went around to the German Tavern to renew the old ties that bound us to town and school. Parker, you're the highest ofiicer, you talk first. Tom helped himself to the mince pie and the Welsh rarcbit before replying. My dear Chris- tian friends, he said, when, in the last analysis it becomes necessary to choose between starting work in Von der Linden's and going on the stage, do you think there is any diliiculty in the choice? No, indeed! After I had spent six years in fighting my way through Cornell, I simply couldn't see selling suc- tion shoes and motor-cycles. I was offered an opportunity to earn my living by my voice, and as, at that time, my stomach was impinging on my backbone, I didn't let them wait on mc very long before I accepted. Since then I have been on the vaudeville stage, although my ambition is to play the Doctor in 'The Boomerang'. H'e hurriedly attacked the pie and the rarebit. DeKlyn, you're next. ' Well, said DeeK, you know better than anyone else what happened to me till we graduat- ed from Amherst. After that I went back to New York a while, but all my friends were gone, and the place seemed dead. I came up to the Park, and found all thc old characters dead or gone away-including Tommy. Winter came on, and I decided to go to California. It was fine out there under the orange-trees, but there wasn't anything to do, so I began pal-ing with the 'movie' actors and actresses. I met 'Charlie' and 'Sid' Chaplin, and the former persuaded me to join his company. He offered me good pay, but when I said I didn't want to become a pro- fessional, he said, 'Well, I'll bet you two thousand dollars you can't jump over this stick.' I did, and now I like the comedy stuff, and wouldn't quit it for some money. . It's Schwartz' turn to harangue, but I'm afraid he won't be able to leave Vassar hospital. I suppose we ought to go down and see him or something.