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He knows how he decorates the space on which he operates. To make another comparison, then, Grock is the Forain of vaudeville. He achieves great plastic beauty with distinguished economy of means. He dispenses with all superfluous gesture, as does the great French illustrator. Grock is entirely right about clownery. You are either funny or you are not.

Robinson Crusoe followed; in which Crusoe, man Friday, and the parrot, were as good and authentic as in the story. The clownery and pantaloonery of these pantomimes have clean passed out of my head. I saw these plays in the season 1781-2, when I was from six to seven years old. That old Artaxerxes evening had never done ringing in my fancy.

He abhors a gentleman because he is most unlike himself, and repines as much at his manner of living as if he maintained him. He murmurs at him as the saints do at the wicked, as if he kept his right from him, for he makes his clownery a sect and damns all that are not of his Church. He manures the earth like a dunghill, but lets himself lie fallow, for no improvement will do good upon him.

The nickname, "Collars-and-Cuffs," became classical; and once, when Brannagan and the 117 were ordered out on the service-car, the Irishman wore the highest celluloid collar he could find in Angels, rounding out the clownery with a pair of huge wickerware cuffs, which had once seen service as the coverings of a pair of Maraschino bottles.