Chapter I

I was passing through Paris and looking for a good show and somebody suggested the House of Deputies. It’s a Satire on our Congress, so that will set you laughing right there. It was the best thing I ever saw in Europe in the way of entertainment. A man on one Party was trying to make a speech and the Socialists and the Labor Members on the other--who were in the minority, but they sure wasent when it come to making noise. This old Boy had no more chance of being heard than a Republican vote has being counted in a Tammany election.

They would get up and run at each other and shake their fists. You would think the whole thing would be murder. But they don’t really fight any oftener than Dempsey. I could take this same troupe to America and rent the Hippodrome and I can get them enough money to pay their debts. New York would go crazy over a show like that. Over home we couldent understand how people could be so mad at each other and even live in the same country.

This last fellow, Poincaré, had the right idea. The minute they put him in he made a motion that the Chamber adjourn for the rest of the summer. So they couldent throw him out till they met again. That assured him of a few weeks Steady work. After I come out of this show, I had a date to eat Dinner with Morris Gest, the Miracle Man and organizer of the late Russian invasion to America. Morris is just soaked full of Art, and I wanted to see at close range just how a real artistic temperament acted. I like Morris with or without Art; everybody likes Morris.

I have known him since away back in the old Hammerstein’s Victoria, which had nothing to do with Art--it was entertainment. He had just come out of Russia--he and Ashton Stevens, of Chicago, the only Dramatic Critic that ever learned William Randolph Hearst to play the Banjo. They had been in looking over this year’s Art crop and they claimed it looked like a bumper year. Balieff--you all knowed Balieff, the best bald-headed Comedian that ever stepped out from behind plush curtains. You have laughed and admired his artistic show for years, the Chauv Surrey, or Sworee, or something like that. He is a real Artist, this Balieff.

Well, we went to one of those Russian layouts that have littered up Paris. Everywhere there used to be a coal cellar there is a Russian Restaurant now. They asked me if I had ever had a taste of Vodka, and they poured out a little small glass of what I thought was water. It was the most innocent-looking thing I ever saw.

Then all said just drink it all down at one swig; nobody can sip Vodka. Well, I had no idea what the stuff was, and for a second I thought somebody had loaded me up with molten lead, and I hollered for water.

Now over in Europe the water is in quart bottles, and here was this Vodka in another quart bottle, and it looks exactly like water; and this Clown Balieff, thinking quick, immediately grabbed the Vodka and loaded up the glass again; and me thinking it was the water, and my throat a-burning, why, I gulped it down quick, and here I was just twice as bad off as I had been. If I could have seen which one to hit I would have swung on him, but they already were blurred. Lord, what quick results that stuff delivers!

I asked, “Where do they get this white Iodine?” They informed me then that that was Russia’s national dissipation. Why, that old white corn down South would be branch water compared to this stuff. Jack Brandy and White Mule would be used as a chaser where this stuff come from. How they can concentrate so much insensibility into one prescription is almost a chemical wonder. This Balieff, the native of that land of boots and blood, then related to me the recipe, which reads as follows:

One half bushel of old Potato peelings; fourteen ears of Russian corn, or maise, Cob and stalk included; four top and soles of worn Russian boots; five grams of Giant Powder; three Bombs chopped up fine. Mix all this in a washtub full of Vulgar River water, add two Revolutions and serve.

Well, I will tell you how these two accidental shots acted on me. We dident know where to go, and Gest suggested that we go up to the Opera; that it was Mary Garden’s last night singing there. Well, it was too late. They had been turning people away since the day before. But you can’t stick Morry, so we waited till the time the show was over and we went into Mary’s dressing room. Her and Morry and all these others were great friends. I had never had the pleasure of meeting her, but she had been responsible for me going on the Concert tour; for she ribbed Charley Wagner up to it, as they were old Pals. So when I come in with them, Mary rushed right over and threw her arms around me and kissed me, and to show you how this Vodka was working, I wouldent push her away; in fact I dident even get mad at her. ’Course, there is not much use going on with the story. About the only moral I can get out of it is, take two swigs of Vodka and then start hunting Mary Garden.

Well, that begin to give me a whole lot of encouragement. I had never been able to get near Mary Garden before. So I started in by asking, “Where is this country that can manafacture such explosives in liquid form? Mebbe they got something that goes with it. Any Nation that’s ingenious can’t be confined to one good idea.”

They said, “It’s Russia, Bud; it’s Russia.”

Now if there is one thing that is a worry to us, it is too much drinking going on over home. I thought up to this that we had the world beat on the collecting of unique articles and scrambling them together and selling the combination under the nom de plume of a livable beverage. But if I can get this Vodka stuff, I will be able to cut the drinking down one-half and mebbe three-fourths. One tiny sip of this Vodka poison and it will do the same amount of material damage to mind and body that an American strives for for hours.

I am--and I think every prohibitionist is--for anything that will cut our drinking down and get it over with as soon as possible. If we must sin, let’s sin quick and don’t let it be a long, lingering sinning. So I asked them, “Where do you get a Veesay to this Utopia?”

Now that is the whole story to Vodka. The recipe I have is only problematical. Nobody in the world knows what it is made out of, and the reason I tell you this is that the story of Vodka is the story of Russia. Nobody knows what Russia is made out of, or what it is liable to cause its inhabitants to do next.

Well, I sure did want to go somewhere where I wouldent be continually reminded that “On the right you will see the Fountains of Versailles”; or “That is the Houses of Parliament, where all the laws of England are made”; or “That is the dome of St. Peter’s.”

I asked Morry Gest, “Do they have rubber neck wagons up there?” He answered in the negative. I think it’s negative when you say no, ain’t it?

Ashton Stevens then pulled the best Gag of the entire tour: “You know, Will, you are just about the poorest dressed Actor I know; in fact that assertion takes in people that are not Actors. Well, as bad as you look when and if you get to Russia, for once in your life you will be the best dressed man in the biggest country in the world.”

Well, I went right over to London and made application for one of those famous Veesays. Russia has an Embassy in London; it’s a kind of an unofficial one. They recognize Russia just enough to sell ’em something. It’s a sorter “You can stay as long as we are doing business, but socially we have lost your address.” In other words, they hate ’em at heart but love ’em financially.

It’s pretty hard to get into Russia. Your application has to be sent to Moscow and be approved or rejected. I had a nice chat with the fellow who put in my application and then hopped out for Geneva to see the Preliminary Disarmament Conference. It had been then going a few days and I figured that everybody’s Navy would be scrapped; that the Airships would be beat into windmills, poison gases would be turned into fertalizing Nitrates, and that every Army would be released to join Jazz bands.

They are still over there, and they all have to be personally armed before they will go in and confer with each other. Again I ask, will we please stop anybody going anywhere to confer with anybody unless it’s his Doctor? And then he is just losing time. The only time we ever attract any attention at a conference is when we don’t go. There has been more talk about us and the League of Nations through being out of it than there ever would have been in the World if we were in it. You know yourself that you have gone to a lot of things that afterwards you had wished you hadent gone too. Nobody can ever get in wrong by not attending anything. But every time you go you take a chance either of getting in wrong or being misunderstood.

Well, after prowling around Switzerland, Italy, Spain and France and all of them, Mary Garden come into my mind again; and naturally that brought up Vodka, for if it hadent been for that Vodka I would never known what Mary Garden perfume smelled like on the original. So I wires over to London to see what has happened to the application for the Veesay. They wire back collect that it is laying right there and that all I have to do is to come and get it and start getting in Russia.