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Updated: June 19, 2025
"If I were to enter a room full of people," said the fishy-eyed young man, "and tell them that my mother had been run over by an omnibus, they would think it the funniest story they had heard in years." He was playing a principal part now in the opera, and it was he undoubtedly who was drawing the house. But he was not happy. "I am not a comic actor, really," he explained.
The lamplight showed a pitiful change in him; he was yellow and fishy-eyed, unshaven, disorderly in dress indeed, so well did he look the part of the despairing lover that Warburton suspected a touch of theatric consciousness. "If you hadn't come to-night," said Will, "I should have looked you up." Franks lay limply in the armchair, staring blankly.
The smaller fry of the company, together with the more pushing of the chorus, supported each in turn, when the others were not looking. Up to the dress rehearsal it was anybody's opera. About one thing, and about one thing, only, had the principals fallen into perfect agreement, and that was that the fishy-eyed young gentleman was out of place in a romantic opera.
The massive gentleman and the fishy-eyed young man were again in close proximity; so long as I knew them they always were together, possessed, apparently, of a sympathetic antipathy for each other.
The society fashion plate may never get the hang of how to earn anything but last year's model pants; and the fishy-eyed nonentity, who never did anything more glorious in college than pay his class tax, may be doing a brokerage business in skyscrapers within ten years. When I left Siwash and came to New York I guess I was as big as the next graduate.
There was a whispered confabulation between the leading low comedian, Mr. Hodgson and the stage manager. As a result, the music ceased and the fishy-eyed young gentleman was requested to explain what he was doing. "Only making love," replied the fishy-eyed young gentleman. "You were playing the fool, sir," retorted the leading low comedian, severely.
Just set there, looking fishy-eyed at the floor. Next morning I met Eben prancing around in his Sunday clothes and with a necktie on that would make a rainbow look like a mourning badge. "Hello!" says I. "You seem to be pretty chipper. You ain't going to start for that fifteen-mile ride through the woods to Ostable, be you? Looks to me as if 'twas going to rain."
Three times it rose and fell, like the opening and shutting of a door; and then followed a scamper for the dressing-rooms, the long corridors being filled with the rustling of skirts and the scurrying of feet. It was in the second act that the fishy-eyed young gentleman came into his own.
The chorus had lingered till it was quite apparent that the tenor and the leading lady were in love with each other; then, with the exquisite delicacy so characteristic of a chorus, foreseeing that its further presence might be embarrassing, it turned to go, half to the east, the other half to the west. The fishy-eyed young man, starting from the centre, was the last to leave the stage.
"I was only looking." It was perfectly true; that was all he was doing. "Then don't look," would comment the tenor. The fishy-eyed young gentleman obediently would turn his face away from them; and in some mysterious manner the situation would thereupon become even yet more hopelessly ridiculous. "My scene, I think, sir!" would thunder our chief comedian, a little later on.
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