In the course of the evening, the small man was hit over the head fifty-seven hundred times; he rose but to fall again, more helplessly than before. He was also kicked—in the nose, in the ear, in front and behind. His nose was pulled into an infinite variety of shapes, being made to resemble every object under heaven from a telephone wire to a turnip. He submitted meekly, and upon him the desire of the whole audience to see mankind made ridiculous was visited times without number. Genially, casually, the tall man kicked him in the face whenever he happened to notice him. The tall man had taken possession of the stage. Singing, dancing, clowning, guying, arguing, wheedling, mocking, bullying—now as an unshaven tramp, a few minutes later as an unshaven Turk, then as an unshaven pirate—whatever a man could be and do without first submitting to that odious refinement of civilization, the clean shave; in a dozen different costumes, always delightful and irresponsible and seductive, and always accompanied by his short comrade, he pervaded the evening. He spoke, and the audience laughed; he refrained from speaking, and the audience laughed. His slapstick, that magic wand which had only to touch things to make them funny, was like himself. He had slapstick shoulders, slapstick eyebrows, ears, nose, legs, posteriors; he acted with all of these, eloquently—and at each gesture some ideal of human dignity was knocked on the head and tumbled on its nose. He sang, walked across the room, made love—and these actions, to the immense satisfaction of the audience, were revealed as essentially absurd. The precious gift he brought was a genial vulgarity, a hilarious cheapening of the values of normal life. When he spoke, with irresistible drollery, about women, about work, about marriage, about anything in the world, it became not worth a—his abrupt gesture told what—and the stout matron in the middle of the parquet became hysterical with laughter. For a moment she was not a solid block in the structure of our respectable American civilization—she was a rebellious child, delightedly come into a dream world where all burdens are lifted, all values transvalued. It seemed to do her good.... Then two dimpled soubrettes sang another song.