Jack Barrymore, son of Maurice Barrymore, and himself an actor of some ability, is not over-particular about his personal appearance and is a little lazy.
He was in San Francisco on the morning of the earthquake. He was thrown out of bed by one of the shocks, spun around on the floor and left gasping in a corner. Finally, he got to his feet and rushed for a bathtub, where he stayed all that day. Next day he ventured out. A soldier, with a bayonet on his gun, captured Barrymore and compelled him to pile bricks for two days.
Barrymore was telling his terrible experience in the Lambs' Club in New York.
"Extraordinary," commented Augustus Thomas, the playwright. "It took a convulsion of nature to make Jack take a bath, and the United States Army to make him go to work."