I nodded my head and left him. On my way back to the city room, I encountered Charley Cautious, a fellow reporter.
“Whose private bath have you been in?” he inquired.
“Horace’s,” I replied.
“Horace’s?” he repeated.
“Horace’s,” I said.35
After a rubdown, I went to work contriving contests. My first idea was an essay contest on “Why I Married Mr. Hopper,” but it proved a failure as, at that time, there were only three persons eligible to the competition and two of the three would not, or could not, reply. The next one went over with a bang. It was a guessing contest of famous men. The names of the men, with a few of the letters left out, were printed in groups of five a day and prizes amounting to $50,000 were offered to those sending the most nearly correct answers, accompanied by a twelve thousand word article on boo scorpions.36
In the paper the first day we had “Abr‑ham L‑nc‑ln; Th‑mas Edis‑n; Charl‑s Ch‑plin; Jac‑ B‑rrymore; Charl‑s D‑ckens.”
On the second day—“J‑mes A. G‑rfield; U. S. Gra‑t; Robert E. L‑e; M‑rk Antony; H‑rry K. Th‑w.”
And on the third day—“G‑orge Ade; J‑seph J‑fferson; Irvin S. Co‑b; H. L. M‑ncken; J‑hn P‑ul J‑nes.”
Prior to the inauguration of this contest, The Rabies had a paid circulation of 126. To be eligible to compete, you had to subscribe to the paper for at least six months, and an even half million people entered the competition, raising our total circulation to 500,126.
Now comes the strange part of it. Of the half million articles on boo scorpions, every one seemed to be the work of a master of the subject; in fact, the articles were so uniformly convincing and scathingly denunciatory that Congress started a nationwide campaign against these ribald vermin and succeeded in exterminating them. Today one speaks of a boo scorpion much the same as of a dinosaur or a mah jongg fiend.37
But it was unnecessary, not to say impossible, to award any of the prizes, because none of the 500,000 competitors came anywhere near guessing the names of the famous men. Almost without exception the answers sent in were Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Edison, Charles Chaplin, Jack Barrymore, Charles Dickens, James A. Garfield, U. S. Grant, Robert E. Lee, Mark Antony, Harry K. Thaw, George Ade, Joseph Jefferson, Irvin S. Cobb, H. L. Mencken and John Paul Jones. Whereas the correct answers were—Abroham Luncalm, Thamas Edisun, Charlus Choplin, Jace Burrymore, Charlas Duckens, etc., every one of them a real person, known to me by hearsay and each famous in the locality in which he lived. For example, the tenth one, guessed by all the competitors as Harry K. Thaw, was in reality a man named Hurry K. Thew, a well known Kansas City bossop tamperer, who drove half the K.C. housewives crazy by sneaking through their gardens by night, tampering with their bossops.
This contest virtually made The Rabies and nearly wrecked me. For months afterwards I lay in a hospital, at death’s door from the strain I had gone through.
XVIII
Halloween in Polyandry Hospital
Arrangements were made by the proprietors of The Rabies to have me examined by two of the most eminent diagnosticians then in New York, Dr. Pine and Dr. Gasp. Dr. Gasp had 104 degrees, while his partner’s temperature was normal. Dr. Pine explained that Dr. Gasp had been drinking heavenly.38
The two doctors made me strip to my nightgown and went all over me with a horoscope. Their diagnosis was chronic alfalfa and they said I must be rushed to a hospital and tattooed.
On the third day of October, 1896, I was ridden on a rail to the Polyandry Hospital and taken in charge by Dr. Barnacle, who immediately put me under the ether. The janitor found me there two days later and lifted me onto a bed. That night I was removed to the operating room and tattooed in three places. On my right knee they did a picture of Whiteman’s band playing before the Chesapeake and Ohio station agent at Clifton Forge; on my chest, the first Battle of the Marne, and on my (at that time) rather high forehead, the piano score of Parsifal.
Operations in those days were quite painful as the anesthetics employed were not nearly so effective as those now in use. In my case, and all other major surgical operations such as appendicitis, internal ulsters, etc., the patient was allowed to suck a lemon; it was not until 1899 that they gave you an aspirin tablet in cases of the removal of a leg or an arm.39
I recovered so wonderfully that after the third day Dr. Barnacle ceased his daily visits to me and left me in the care of the interns (so called because every time you wanted one of them, he had just turned in). My room, which I shared with the Marx brothers, the Dolly sisters and the Fairbanks twins, was a veritable paunch of flowers and I received so many telegrams that the company sent them in separate envelopes.
On the thirtieth of the month I was pronounced cured and told I could go home, but the nurses, who had taken quite a fancy to me, persuaded me to remain and participate in the Halloween pranks, which were then a feature of hospital life.40
Well, the things we didn’t do would be easier to tell than the things we did.41
Among the pranks I recall particularly are the following:
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The patient in Room 18 had been almost fatally burned in an apartment house fire. A crowd of twenty other patients and nurses gathered outside his door and yelled “Fire!” till he jumped out the window. As Room 18 was on the fifth
