Quote of the Day (Robert Benchley, on a Christmas Pageant in the Vestry Starring Kids)

“Twenty-five seconds too early little Flora Rochester will prance out from the wings, uttering the first shrill notes of a song, and will have to be grabbed by eager hands and pulled back. Twenty-four seconds later the piano will begin ‘The Return of the Reindeer’ with a powerful accent on the first note of each bar, and Flora Rochester, Lillian McNulty, Gertrude Hamingham and Martha Wrist will swirl on, dressed in white, and advance heavily into the footlights, which will go out.

“There will then be an interlude while Mr. Neff, the sexton, adjusts the connection, during which the four little girls stand undecided whether to brave it out or cry. As a compromise they giggle and are herded back into the wings by Mrs. Drury, amid applause. When the lights go on again, the applause becomes deafening, and as Mr. Neff walks triumphantly away, the little boys in the audience will whistle: ‘There she goes, there she goes, all dressed up in her Sunday clothes”!”— American humorist and actor Robert Benchley (1889-1945), “A Christmas Spectacle,” in Love Conquers All (1922)