I started in on those same Jokes on up-to-date things that had flopped so completely at the Millionaire’s Charity affair. Why, say, they just started right in dying laughing at them. I was sorry Ziegfeld wasn’t there, as I would have got a raise in salary if he had heard how my act went. I don’t care what I talked about they knew all about it. Ordinarily, I only do about 15 or 20 minutes but up there I did an Hour and a Quarter. I was so tickled I offered to take all the whole audience of 12 hundred down to the Follies and pay their way in to see our Show. Now you know I must feel pretty good with myself, when I offer to spend my Dough like that. A lot of people would be kinder sore at the 400 because they didn’t laugh like these 12 hundred did, but I am not. I don’t blame them. If I had their money I wouldn’t read either. So I can understand very readily why Vanderlip’s act didn’t go so big in Washington as it did in Ossining. Of course Van and I use just the opposite methods in our Stage performances. Every Gag I tell must be based on truth. No matter how much I may exaggerate it, it must have a certain amount of Truth. Vanderlip bases his Gags on Rumor. Now Rumor travels Faster, but it don’t stay put as long as Truth. I will, however, give him credit for one thing. While here lately everybody is telling what he has heard, and all about this and that rumor, why, he thought of by far the best ones I have heard up to now. That’s no small accomplishment I tell you, in this year of Rumors, to be able to say at the end of it: “Well, I told the best ones.” His were so good that before his audience got through applauding at Sing Sing (or rather Ossining) why, they had him on the stand at Washington. That’s the first time a Theatrical troup ever jumped from Ossining to Washington. They even put him on ahead of Fall, Sinclair, and all the Headliners. TWO LONG LOST FRIENDS FOUND AT LAST [Illustration: THEY REHEARSED THEIR OLD ACT HERE YESTERDAY.] TWO LONG LOST FRIENDS FOUND AT LAST Well, sir, I have a real Message for my readers. It looked like it would be just the ordinary Article with no flavor or Backbone or Truth, and with no real underlying news or wisdom, that is, nothing that the people would be glad to know and read. As I say, that is the kind of Article I thought it would be. But as I picked up the morning Papers, why, I read who was in our midst out here in Sunny California. Well, sir, it struck me like a thunderbolt here was news which my public had been longing for for years and here I had found it out! Well, I says to myself, this is too good to keep, for here people had been wondering all this time for just what I knew now. I kinder hated to leave the East on account of thinking I would be out of touch with some of our National Characters but I find that sooner or later they all arrive out here and start in fighting off Real Estate men the same as shooing away Mosquitoes on Long Island.