THE AMOROUS BABOON

Thanks to the busy Press Agent, the fame of Jocko the Jealous, the amorous baboon, had preceded him to America, and when the animals from the Paris Hippodrome had been safely transferred to their dens in the Arena at Dreamland he was the center of attraction as he limbered up his muscles in the large monkey cage, after the cramped accommodations of the small traveling box. He had gained a reputation as a masher in Paris; but never had the menagerie attendants seen him so madly in love and so insanely jealous as upon his first introduction to American beauty, as exemplified by the fair woman who stood before his cage.

Jocko was not the first male being who had been fascinated by the charms of the Prima Donna during her career; for she had been through the marriage ceremony so often that she could say it backwards, never forgetting to cross her fingers before saying, "Until death do us part." The Proprietor drew the Stranger's attention to the group before the cage, a mischievous smile on his face as he looked over the half dozen of callow youths who are always in the train of the Prima Donna.

"Watch out for squalls over there," he said. "Jocko is affectionate now, but there will be something doing in a few minutes." The monkey was using all of the blandishments known to an amorous baboon and although the words of his soft chattering were unintelligible, their import could not be mistaken by a past mistress of the gentle art of love making; but the Prima Donna could not be beguiled into placing herself within reach of the hairy paws. Suddenly his mood changed, for one of her male companions placed his hand on her arm to attract her attention and Jocko, giving a howl of rage, danced madly up and down on all fours, showing a vicious set of fangs as his lips curled back in a hideous snarl. The bars of his cage were strong and so close together that he could not get out to attack his rival; but he gathered up a mass of litter from the floor and showered Prima Donna and callow youth alike. His screams echoed through the Arena and caused even the majestic lions and the haughty tigers to look in the direction of the cage of the despised "Bandar Log," and made the smaller animals uneasy. The woman who was described on the programme as "Miss ——, Famous Society Woman," had torn herself away from her arduous social duties with the Four Hundred to exhibit a troupe of leopards to a Coney Island audience, her identity concealed by a small black mask, and her performance in the big cage was interrupted by the noise; so the Proprietor thought it time to interfere.

"He smoked his cigar in the lobby like any other guest."

The Prima Donna laughed good-naturedly as he helped to brush the sawdust and litter from her dress and tactfully drew her away, and Jocko quieted down and implored her to return; but she was accustomed to gentler wooing, and refused to put her dainty gown again in jeopardy.

"Jocko gave quite a performance to-night," said the Proprietor as he joined the Press Agent and the Stranger at the table, after the show. "That baboon is crazy about women; but he hasn't the discrimination of Consul, the most intelligent monkey that ever lived. You may remember that he was never quiet in his cage, but if a specially well-dressed woman stopped in front of it he played entirely to her and when she moved away his eyes followed her as long as she was in sight."

"There will never be another like Consul," said the Press Agent, shaking his head sadly. "He made my job a sinecure, for he was good for a column any day and a full page on Sundays."

"Never until the Missing Link is discovered," replied the Proprietor. "I don't believe a more human monkey will ever be found, and I attribute his wonderful intelligence to the fact that he associated entirely with human beings, almost from the day of his birth. I got him from the captain of a tramp steamer which traded to the West Coast, and I paid a goodish bit of money for him too. I have never dared to tell his early history as it was told to me, for fear I should be laughed at for a liar; but stranger things happen in the animal business than ever get into print, and if I dared risk my reputation by telling the things which actually occur in a menagerie, I should never need a Press Agent; but a plausible lie is accepted where a truth which sounds improbable is turned down."

The Press Agent looked at him reproachfully, but agreed with the proposition.

"Do you know, I have found that to be true when I have visited the newspaper offices," he said. "I have actually had to embroider some of the accounts of things which have happened here."

"I suspected it, for I didn't recognize some of the stories when I saw them in print," answered the Proprietor, smiling at him approvingly. He consented to tell the history of Consul, the famous chimpanzee, when the Stranger expressed his entire credulity and the Press Agent assumed an encouraging and sympathetic attitude.

"Jocko, giving a howl of rage, danced madly up and down."

"Of course, I have to take the ship captain's word for what happened before I bought him, but from the way the chimp developed and the intelligence he displayed after he came into my possession, I am prepared to believe it. He told me that he got him from the natives at the mouth of a small river on the West Coast, where he anchored his steamer to trade. They came off about the ship in their canoes, but he did not care for the rubber and ivory they had to offer and he was about to hoist anchor when one of them, who was in a small canoe with a woman, motioned to him to stop. The woman was crouched up in the stern, nursing what the captain thought was a baby, but when the man dragged it away from her, in spite of her voluble protest, he saw that it was a small chimpanzee. The man seemed desperately anxious to trade—and I imagine the captain's trade goods were not the sort to meet the entire approval of the missionaries—so that a bargain was concluded and the woman's grief allayed by a generous share of the purchase price. As nearly as he could make out, she had found the little thing in the jungle when it was only a few days old and had reared it in place of a baby which had just died. She was a low type of woman, even for an African savage, but the maternal instinct was strong enough to make her grieve for little Consul, as the captain christened him. The monkey grieved over the separation, too, but sailors make much of animals and he soon became reconciled to it.

"Thousands of people saw him after I purchased him, and you can judge of the reputation he attained when I tell you that I was getting fifteen hundred dollars a week for him in Berlin when he died, and he was booked for the entire season at that price. People had seen him eat with a knife and fork, smoke a cigar, use a typewriter and do all of the stunts which simply aped humanity, but you had to live with the little beast to appreciate how intensely human he was. Everybody connected with the show loved him, and when I wanted to find any one of the employees who was off duty, or not in his proper place, I always went first to Consul's cage and I was pretty sure to locate him. That monkey was never still, and the things he would do and the pranks he would play off his own bat were more amusing than any of the things he had been taught.

"When he was in company he was as well mannered as most men, but, of course, he had his prejudices and had to be watched. His special aversion was a negro, which is strange when you consider his early associations, and if one came around when he was loose he was apt to attack him. We had to consider that in traveling, for Consul always stopped at the hotels with his trainer and sat about the lobbies, smoking his cigar like any other guest, but if there were negro servants about, we had to be very careful not to let them come near him.

"He had the reasoning power of a child of ten years old; he was patient when anything was wrong and we had to do disagreeable things to him, appreciating that it was for his benefit. Only once did we have to use force, when it was necessary to pull a tooth, and I am glad it wasn't oftener, for it took seven men to control him and they thought they had done a day's work when we finished. The last time he went abroad he was the life of the ship, but he pretty nearly killed himself. The doctor prescribed a cough medicine for him and Consul liked it so well that he got up in the night, after his trainer had gone to sleep, opened the valise in which it was kept and emptied the bottle. I guess there must have been laudanum in it, for they had to work over him the rest of the night to save him.

"All of his savage instincts were aroused."

"He would walk the deck with the lady passengers, who made a great deal of him, and when the customary concert was given, nothing would do but that he must perform and then pass the plate for the collection. He was in evening dress and behaved like a perfect gentleman, and the collection was a large one. It was heaped on the plate, and he was just about to present it to the captain when Booker Washington stepped forward to make a contribution. The money for the Seaman's Home went flying to the four corners of the salon and the trainer had a difficult time in persuading Consul to retire without tearing the clothes off of the man whose only offense was his color. This was Consul's last voyage, for he contracted pleurisy and died in Berlin, and I felt worse over his death than I did over the burning of my whole menagerie in Baltimore a few years ago."

"Have you found that early association with human beings makes the other animals easier to train?" asked the Stranger, and the Proprietor shook his head.

"No; I would rather train one taken in the jungle than an animal born in captivity. They do raise the pumas in South America and have them about the houses as we do cats; but I wouldn't trust one of 'em. And as for the bigger cats, the lions and tigers, there is no such thing as taming them. They may be trained to do certain things, but they are never trustworthy. We had a queer illustration of that when I was traveling with a caravan circus in France. One of the lionesses had a litter of three cubs, and in the excitement of the moving and strange surroundings, she killed two of them. We took the other one away and the woman who cooked for us volunteered to raise it. She became very much attached to it and developed the theory that she could overcome its savage instincts by diet, and for a time it looked as if she were right. The beast was with her for about two years and grew to a fine animal, but she never let him taste raw food. One day, when he was comfortably lying before the stove, she pushed him with her foot to get him out of the way and he resented it. Whether it was that alone, or whether the odor of meat which she was about to cook appealed to him, I don't know; but all of his savage instincts were aroused and when we secured him we found that he had taken most of her scalp off."

"It's funny how some people are always looking for a chance to get damages," said the Press Agent, settling himself comfortably in his chair. "We had a case of it when Merritt and I were running a dime museum out West. The freaks all lived together at a large boarding house and one morning, when they reported for duty, the 'Tattooed Lady' was missing. It was before the days when they were so common and we had spent a lot of money to have her decorated and made her our star attraction. Of course, none of the tattooing was visible when she was in street costume, but when she sat on the platform dressed in low neck and short skirts the lecturer had something to talk about, for the menagerie pictured on her was a thing of beauty, and the few choice texts like, 'Be good and you will be happy,' which were scattered in between the animals, were highly moral and elevating, and that was one of the strong points of our show. Merritt used to spread himself when he was telling how she was shipwrecked on a desert island and held captive by the cruel cannibals, whose high priests spared her from the menu to tattoo her with the symbols of their heathenish worship. It gave him a great chance to come in strong on the moral part, when he explained about the texts and told how they were added after the cannibals had been converted to red flannel shirts, silk hats and a vegetable diet, by the missionaries, and I have seen ancient maiden ladies moved to tears by his recital. So when he had to give his lecture without her, he got mixed up and called attention to the marvelous growth of hair on the face of the 'Circassian Beauty,' thinking she was the 'Bearded Lady,' and nearly pulled the ears off of the 'Dog Faced Boy,' trying to explain that he was 'The Man With The Rubber Skin.' Of course, that made trouble among the freaks, who are a mighty touchy lot anyway, and I have noticed that trouble always comes in bunches in the show business, so I wasn't surprised when a husky guy that looked like a farmer came in with blood in his eye and asked for the manager. I looked around for Merritt, but he had gone around the corner to get something to drown his sorrow, so I slipped a piece of lead pipe under my coat and acknowledged the soft impeachment.

"A 'Tattooed Lady,' and she's all covered with picters."

"'Look'ee here, wot kinder a skin game be youse fellers runnin' here?' says the guy, and I took a good grip on the lead pipe and tried to turn away wrath by a soft answer, and quoting from our advertisement that it was a highly moral and intellectual entertainment.

"'Not by a dern sight, it ain't,' says he. 'It's a blasted man-trap to ketch the unwary, an' I'll have the law on ye an' make yer pay fer trifling with my young affections.' I have had some pretty tough things said to me in my day, but that was about the worst ever, and pretty nearly took my breath away, but he went right on.

"'I deliver milk to that boardin' house down the street an' I see a likely lookin' gal there lately an' I wanted some one to help milk an' look after the house, so I asks her to marry me. She says she will, so we hitched up an' I never knew she was one o' yer dern freaks until it was too late. She says she's a "Tattooed Lady," an' she's all covered with picters.'

"'Well, what's the matter with 'em?' says I. 'Aren't they good pictures?'

"'Good enough,' says he, 'for them as likes 'em; but I don't hanker after no decorations o' that kind an', b'gosh, I'll make yer pay fer palmin' off a damaged article on me. She's all over snakes an' other beasts an' it makes me sick ter my stummick every time I thinks of 'em.' I tried to convince him that we were not responsible and that it was his wife's duty to have informed him.

"'That's what I told her, dod gast her! But she says it's my own fault if I didn't know she was a "Tattooed Lady," because I never asked her, an' blamed if she isn't proud o' them picters, too.'"

"How did you settle it—did he get damages?" asked the Stranger.

"Damages!" exclaimed the Press Agent as he wiped the foam from his moustache. "Why, Merritt came in, and when he heard the guy's kick he lit right into him.

"'Blame your skin!' he yelled. 'I've a good mind to have you arrested for stealing the pictures from my art gallery. I have a claim on 'em, for I paid for the liquor to keep a sailor drunk for six weeks while he was doing that job.' The Rube got onto the fact that she was valuable, so they adjourned to a saloon to talk it over."

"With what result?" asked the Proprietor, as he rose from the table.

"Well, Merritt got her back on the platform, the Rube sold his farm, and within six weeks he was wearing more yellow diamonds and throwing a bigger chest than the husband of a grand opera prima donna."

FEEDING THE SERPENTS
AND
A GRAND TRANSFORMATION

The animals had received their evening meal when the Proprietor came from the Arena and joined the Stranger and the Press Agent at the table outside.

"I can never understand the interest people take in seeing the carnivorous animals fed; it is no more than giving a bone to a dog," he said, as he took his seat. "And yet it is one of the best drawing features of the show, and the same people remain night after night to see the meat poked into the cages. If it were not for the prohibition of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals I could give a feeding exhibition which would be novel and interesting, for comparatively few people have ever seen a snake eat.

"It is because a snake will not eat unless it kills its own food," he continued in answer to a question from the Stranger. "Snakes are more particular feeders than any other animals, and they will not touch anything which is not alive when it is brought to them. This is the night for feeding them, and if you care to remain until the crowd has gone you can see how it is done. Long as I have been in the business, I learn something new every day, and I never saw a cobra fed artificially until last week, when Brandu, my Hindoo snake charmer, received one direct from India. It seems that they are cannibal snakes and live upon their own kind in India, but that would be too expensive a diet here, and he forces feed down its throat."

The thousands of incandescent lights on the Dreamland tower went out—the signal that the barkers might cease from barking and the spielers spiel no more—until the morrow brought its fresh crowd of amusement seekers, and the Proprietor led the way into the Arena. Brandu and his two native assistants were carrying the boxes which contained the snakes into the big exhibition cage, and, when the three men joined them, the weirdness of the surroundings made a profound impression upon the Stranger. All of the lights in the Arena were extinguished, with the exception of the small cluster directly over their heads, and pairs of luminous spots from the great semicircle of cages at the outer edge of the building reminded him that the human beings in the cage were not the only interested spectators of the proceedings.

"A procession of sandwich men."

The assistants carefully removed the great boas and pythons from the boxes, laying them on the floor, where they crawled lazily about, their delicate forked tongues vibrating like streaks of red flame, while Brandu removed a slat from a crate of rabbits and put a half-dozen of them on the floor. The little animals had no instinctive fear of the serpents, for they hopped about among them and over their wriggling bodies unconcernedly, but the snakes were hungry after a fast of two weeks and they wasted no time in getting to the business before them. The proceeding was the same in each case. A serpent would crawl up to the rabbit and place its nose, at which the little furry beast would sniff curiously, close to that of its prospective supper. The red forked tongue would pass rapidly over its face and the rabbit made no attempt to move. Whether it was the effect of some anæsthetic quality in the breath of the snake or the traditional charm of the serpent, it was hard to say, but the rabbit made no move to escape. Slowly but surely it yielded to the fascination of the snake, the large transparent ears dropped to the side of the head and the body muscles relaxed until the tickling of the serpent's tongue caused no reflex movement of the paws.

The snake then carefully withdrew its head until the slim neck was in the form of a letter S, and when it again straightened out it was with the force of a released steel spring and the aim of the flat head was unerring. The stroke was so rapid that it was difficult for the eye to follow and the rabbit never knew what happened, for its body made a quick circle in the air and in less than a second all that was to be seen was one small paw protruding from the coiled body which had brought it a quick and merciful death. The jaws of the serpent have seized it by the snout and thrown it back into its coils and the first pressure kills it, although the ever tightening embrace continues until the bones are crushed within the unbroken skin, so that it can be easily swallowed.

It is not swallowing in the ordinary sense of the word, for the snakes pull themselves over the rabbits as a glove is pulled over the finger, and the progress to the stomach can be watched through the length of the snake's neck. The snakes which were too small to manage a rabbit were fed on white rats and mice, but the process was the same in each case, except that the Hindoos held the rodents by their tails until the snakes had hypnotized them.

"I suppose that this seems cruel to people because the rabbits are such harmless little beasts," said the Proprietor as the last bit of fur disappeared. "To my mind it is not half so cruel as hunting hares with guns and dogs, for death from the snake's blow is as quick and painless as that from a bullet, and there are no maimed and wounded animals to drag themselves away to lingering deaths in hiding. But now I will show you something which has never been known in this country."

"Brought the head of the cobra close to his face."

One of the natives brought out a curiously woven circular basket which he handled with great care, and setting it in the middle of the cage retired to a respectful distance. Brandu crouched on the floor beside it, and, although the performance was not accompanied by the weird Oriental music which signaled the public appearances of the snake charmer, the tense expression of his face and the uncanniness of the surroundings made it sufficiently impressive, for he was about to handle the cobra de capello, the most venomous snake in all the great collection. He wasted no time in the pantomime and incantation of the ring performance, but quickly threw off the cover, and when the hooded head arose swaying above the edge of the basket, he started a low whistling and passed his slim brown hands with lightning rapidity above it. He was absolutely fearless, but the task before him demanded the concentration of all his thoughts and he seemed unconscious of the startling interruption of a fight between two of the lions, and the shouts and pistol-shots of the keepers who separated them.

He never removed his gaze from the head of the serpent and his hands moved so rapidly that they were almost invisible until, quicker than a snake could strike, one of them darted down and caught the slim neck behind the distended hood. He gave a sharp exclamation of triumph and sprang to his feet, the cobra coiling its body about his bare brown arm and giving every indication of rage.

"I am always glad when that part of the performance is over," said the Proprietor with a sigh of relief. "Of course, it is all in the day's work with Brandu and he has done it thousands of times, but some day he will be a fraction of a second too slow and then—well, I shall have to get another snake charmer. Watch him now and you will see something which only the men of his caste can do."

Brandu's white teeth glistened as he smiled at the Proprietor and pointed first to his own eyes and then to those of the serpent. He brought the head of the cobra close to his face, his expression became fixed and stern and the pupils of his widely opened eyes, which had been dilated until the iris was but a narrow rim, contracted to the size of pin heads. The cobra gazed at him fixedly and the tense body slowly uncoiled from his arm and hung limp and motionless, and Brandu laid it on the floor as lifeless and inert as a piece of rope. One of his assistants handed him a glass containing a couple of raw eggs and, handling it as carelessly as if it were a harmless garter snake, he picked up the cobra and forced a tube of polished bamboo between its jaws. When he had poured the eggs through the tube he withdrew it and carefully replaced the snake in the basket, still apparently lifeless; but bending over he blew sharply into its face and the cobra was instantly reanimated into five feet of viciousness. Its head reared up above the edge, the spectacled hood distended in anger, but Brandu quickly clapped on the cover and the snake feeding was finished for two weeks.

"You're a blame fine figure of a fat man."

"That is a great performance of Brandu's," said the Press Agent, "but it profits us nothing because the best part of it cannot be shown to the public. I never see a snake fed without thinking of something which happened when I was running a side show with the Greatest Show on Earth.

"You know that the dime museum business was run to death while the craze lasted in this country, and freaks got so common that you couldn't throw a stone in the streets of any large city without hitting one of 'em. When the fickle public tired of giving up its dimes to see 'em, a guy named Merritt and myself had a choice collection on hand, and we went on the road with the big show for the summer, thinking perhaps our business would pick up in the fall. Our two great attractions were the biggest boa-constrictor in captivity, which we called 'Jointless Jake,' and the heaviest fat man in the world. That snake was about two hundred feet long, and while the fat man wasn't much on length, he held the record for belt measurement. Nine hundred and twenty-seven pounds he weighed, as we demonstrated on our own scales at every performance. Their feed bill was quite an item, as the snake took a half-dozen sheep every two weeks and the fat man, who was billed as 'Signor Adipose Avoirdupois'—Merritt invented that—needed about a side of beef every day.

"Freaks are a jealous lot and as hard to manage as rival prima donnas, and these two monstrosities came to hate each other like poison. They were in different lines, but you may have noticed that the side show 'professor' uses up most of the superlatives in the English language when he gives his lecture, and each of 'em seemed afraid that the other would get some of his share of the dictionary. Adipose used to look at Jake's coiled body as if he would like to sit on it and flatten it out, and the snake would return the glance with a naughty little twinkle in its eye, as if he was estimating how much it would have to stretch its skin to accommodate A. A. in its interior, until it made Merritt anxious about 'em.

"'That blame fat fool will waste away and spoil his shape, if he don't stop worrying,' he says, and he cuts a lot of his talk out of the description of the snake and uses the words on Adipose. Maybe you think snakes are stupid, but they aren't, and the boa got the hump and refused to uncoil himself to show his length unless he got his full share of the spiel. It cheered Avoirdupois up, though, and when we moved to the next town he stood around to gloat over Jake when he was being moved from the traveling box to the exhibition cage. The snake hadn't been fed for ten days and he was good and lively as well as being out of temper, so when he caught sight of the Signor he scattered the boys with one flip of his tail and went for him.

"I've heard of bear hugs, but I never saw such a squeezing as that boa gave poor Adipose. It was a long way around him, but the snake made about a dozen wraps and all we could see of the fat man was a pair of feet sticking out at one end of the coil and his face, which looked like a purple harvest moon, projecting from the other. Jake reaches out and gets hold of a tent peg with his tail, which gives him a purchase, and then he tightens up for fair and Adipose lets out a holler you could hear a mile.

"Of course, we got busy with crowbars and jackscrews and tried to pry Jake off, but there was nothing doing and the harder we pried the closer he cinched up on Adipose. Merritt usually had a suggestion to make, so I looked at him and he was lost in thought, but in a minute he brightens up and calls for a rope.

"'We can't pry the blame snake away from the man,' says he, as he tied the rope around the Signor's feet, 'so we'll try to pull the man away from the snake.' All hands fell to and pulled to beat four of a kind, but Jake just tightened up a bit and grinned and Adipose let out another holler.

"'You need a traction engine on that rope,' says I when they gave it up as a bad job, and Merritt, who was looking a little discouraged, gave a whoop.

"'Bring an elephant,' he yelled, and when one of the boys started off on a run for the menagerie, he called after him to 'make that order two elephants.' The Hathis came lumbering over, and Merritt tied the rope around the shoulders of one and put another rope around Jake's neck and the shoulders of the other elephant.

"'Now pull, blame you!' says he, heading 'em in different directions and giving one of 'em a kick, and they put their shoulders against the ropes. It was a mighty interesting performance to every one but Adipose, who didn't seem to enjoy it at all, judging from the yells he let out. Jake was having the time of his life, and the harder the elephants pulled the tighter he squeezed the Signor, and when he felt that they were getting the better of him he made a supreme effort which kinked up every muscle in his body. But there was no holding on against those brutes, and pretty soon the fat man commenced to slip out from the coils, feet first. It was a queer thing to watch and his legs stretched so that I thought his knees would never come into sight. His legs had been about the size of barrels when the snake grabbed him, but between the stretching and the squeezing they were now three times as long and about as large as broomsticks. He weighed as much as ever when the elephants finally got him out, but the flesh was distributed differently and instead of being six feet tall and twelve feet around, he was twelve feet long and built in proportion. The snake was up against it, too, for he had cramped himself so with that last squeeze that he couldn't straighten out the kinks, and he kept in the same shape as when he was wrapped around the Signor. We tried to straighten him out, but it was no use; he just stayed coiled up like a spring and the boys rolled him around as if he were a barrel.

"Merritt had kept cheerful as long as there was anything to be done, but tears came to his eyes when he looked at Adipose. The Signor was standing up, gazing at his feet, which he hadn't seen before in twenty years, and Merritt looked up at him and freed his mind.

"'You're a blame fine figure of a fat man, aren't you, now?' says he. 'Just on account of your confounded professional jealousy we lose our two star attractions, for that blamed snake is so kinked up that he isn't good for anything except to cut up into barrel hoops.'

"The Signor was ashamed of himself and hadn't a word to say, so he just kept quiet and tried to get used to his new shape and taking a bird's-eye view of things. Merritt and I were feeling pretty blue when along comes Tody Hamilton, the circus press agent, and as soon as he saw what had happened he made a run for a trolley car.

"'Don't let 'em get away!' he yelled back over his shoulder. 'This is the biggest scoop on record and I'm off for the printing-office.'

"Jake was having the time of his life, and the harder the elephants pulled the tighter he squeezed the Signor."

"'It'll make a good newspaper story, all right; but where do we come in on it?' says Merritt, looking mournfully at Adipose.

"Well, a couple of hours later I had to go into the city to order some new togs for the Signor, who looked as if he were dressed in a particularly baggy bathing suit since he had been stretched out, and the first thing I saw was a procession of sandwich men marching down the street. The ink wasn't dry on the posters, but Tody had been busy, and there in flaming red letters was the announcement—

JUST ARRIVED AT THE
BIG SHOW!

DON'T MISS SEEING THEM!!!

LENGTHY LOUIS, THE TALLEST
MAN IN THE UNIVERSE!!!

CIRCULAR SAM, THE MOST GIGANTIC
HOOP SNAKE EVER CAPTURED!!!

THE LIONESS SKIRT DANCE
AND THE
INCONSIDERATE PYTHON

The conventional skirt dance has long ceased to be a novelty on the vaudeville stage, but as it is performed by "La Belle Selica" in the Arena at Dreamland it holds the interest of that most exacting audience—a crowd of Coney Island pleasure seekers. It is not because Selica is pre-eminent among dancers, but on account of the unusual and dangerous stage setting; for she performs in the large exhibition cage, surrounded by a half dozen lionesses, each animal seated on a separate pedestal. Any one of the huge beasts could crush the dancer with a single blow of a massive paw, and the great jaws which snap viciously at her tiny feet as she kicks them before their faces are sufficiently powerful to crush the shin-bone of an ox.

She is apparently without fear of them, for she dances gracefully from one to the other, flicking them across their faces with the light switch which she carries for her only protection, and kicking over their heads and into their very mouths, always missing the answering snap of the jaws by the fraction of an inch, and acknowledging it with a smile as she whirls away to repeat the performance before another pedestal. The lionesses see the performance many times in the course of a season, but they never lose interest in it and they do not remove their eyes from Selica from the time she enters the cage until she drives them out before her. So long as she is on her feet and agile enough to escape the swift stroke of a paw or the snapping jaws, she is safe; for a lioness would not jump at her from a pedestal; but there is always the chance of a slip or a false step and then——!!!

It happened once, and caused a suspension of Selica's performance for two months during the Pan-American Exposition at Buffalo, for Grace, the largest lioness, was on her before she could recover herself; and it required the efforts of Bostock and all of his trainers to beat back the beasts who were maddened by the sight and smell of blood and to rescue the unconscious woman from the cage. They have never forgotten that moment of rebellion which was so nearly successful, and they are ever watchful for another opportunity to avenge the many cuts of the training whip which they received in the course of their schooling. But Selica is also watchful, and although Grace had latterly done nothing particularly out of the way, the wonderful sixth sense which experienced trainers always acquire warned her that the animal should be regarded with suspicion. The beast had become nervous; a little more sullen than usual when ordered to leave her den for the exhibition cage, and a trifle slow and rebellious when told to jump up on her allotted pedestal.

"Now, if you'll kindly give me your attention."

Constant association with the wild animals begets carelessness but Selica, with the scars of Grace's sharp claws still visible on her back and shoulders, was quick to notice the change and especially careful, before opening the door from the den to the runway, to look through the observation hole and make sure that the lioness was not crouched for a spring. Grace had been particularly sullen in the afternoon and she was growling ominously when Selica went to get her for the evening performance, but when the woman saw the three little furry balls which were huddled in a corner of the den she understood and forgave all. The cubs were no larger than St. Bernard puppies, but Grace apparently considered them worth fighting for; and Selica's dance was given that night with only five lionesses in the cage, and the Proprietor told the Stranger the reason for the empty pedestal.

"Wait until after the performance and I will take them out of the cage and show them to you," he said; and the Stranger, remembering a tradition to the effect that robbing a lioness of her cubs is a dangerous feat, looked forward with a great deal of interest to the after-piece.

"We can't trust the rearing of the cubs to Grace," said the Proprietor, as he stood in front of her cage after the audience had been dismissed. "The close proximity of the other animals in the Arena and the curiosity of the thousands of people who come here every day would make her so crazy that she would destroy them, so I must get them a foster mother. I have sent to New York for a bitch with pups, and in a couple of days I will show you a happy family." The cubs were in the center of the cage and Grace stood over them, snarling and looking with blazing eyes at the group in front of it; but Selica's voice from the runway and a rattling of the door at the back distracted her attention, and as she sprang at the door the Proprietor darted a hand between the bars and seized one of the cubs, drawing it safely out a half second before the enraged mother landed against the bars with a force which made them rattle.

The poor beast was almost frantic, but the same maneuver was twice repeated, and in spite of her fierce attacks on doors and bars the Proprietor, who had acquired through his lifetime association with the great cats as much of their quickness of movement as it is given to mere man to learn, removed the three cubs without receiving a scratch.

Poor helpless little creatures they were, and it was difficult to realize that they would soon grow into beasts as powerful as the ferocious Baltimore, the terror of trainers, who was answering Grace's lamentations with roars which fairly shook the building, from his cage on the other side of the Arena.

"Looked like the pennant of a man-o'-war."

"That animal was bred in captivity, born and raised in our menagerie in England," said the Proprietor after he had placed the cubs in charge of one of the keepers. "I suppose that's what makes him such a bad beggar to handle. Give me the jungle-bred lion to train, every time, for after the manhandling and discomfort of his capture and transportation to the coast by the natives, he appreciates the care and humanity of a civilized trainer. These cubs which are raised in captivity are always played with and teased by the employees and visitors, and their first knowledge of their strength comes to them accidentally when they hurt a man without meaning to do it; but they soon learn to connect cause and effect, and then it is time to watch out for 'em. A jungle-bred lion is pretty much cock o' the walk until he is snared or trapped, and in his first experience with men he is vanquished and realizes how useless is his great strength against the nets and ropes which entangle him. The cub born in captivity is familiar with men from the first, and plays with them like a kitten until one day he is out of sorts or is accidentally hurt in a frolic and the swift cut of his razor-like claws makes his playmate or tormentor drop him and leave him in peace. That makes it hard for the trainer when he takes him in hand, for although the cub may be subdued, he remembers that he was once victorious and watches his chance. Jack Bonavita, the greatest trainer who ever went into a lion's cage, would have two good arms to-day if Baltimore had been born in the Nubian desert instead of in Manchester."

They stood in front of Baltimore's cage for a moment, admiring the swelling muscles of the great beast as he sprang from side to side, shaking his shaggy mane and roaring defiance at the world, and then turned to go to the white-topped table in front of the Arena. In the doorway they met the Press Agent, looking anything but cheerful and muttering maledictions on the heads of all city editors. The Proprietor told him of the new arrivals in the Arena, and suggested sending the announcement of the birth to the papers.

"A fat chance I'd stand of having it printed," he grumbled. "Here I've worked half the season and never given 'em a story that wasn't pretty nearly true, and to-day when I take them that account of Morelli and the jaguar they turn me down and holler 'fake.' Let me take one of those cubs and stripe it over with a little black paint, and to-morrow morning every newspaper in New York will have a photographer down here to take pictures of 'the only hybrid lion-tiger cub ever born,' and all of the space jerkers will be buttonholing me for a three column, front page story."

The arrival of the waiter with soothing beverages soon brought back the customary smile to his genial face and the Proprietor's suggestion that perhaps he had embroidered some of the stories just a trifle, aroused only a good-natured protest.

"The worst thing about the press agent's profession is that he has to risk his eternal salvation by making up plausible lies to satisfy the newspapers when he could give 'em better stories which are actually true if they would take 'em on his say so," he said, as he wiped the froth from his mustache. "I remember once when a guy named Merritt and myself were running a snake show in New York that we couldn't pay the rent because the papers wouldn't give us any publicity, although we had the finest collection of wrigglers that was ever gotten together. We were running it on the dead level, nary a fake about it, and Merritt's lecture was highly instructive and interesting and more than half true; but we saw that we couldn't win out at the game unless we crooked it. We were running so far behind that the only thing which saved us from a dispossess was the fact that they couldn't get a constable who would carry the snakes out to the sidewalk; but Merritt was a resourceful cuss and I felt confident that he would figure out some scheme to win out.

"Kicking over their heads and into their very mouths."

"'Jim,' says he, 'it's necessary for us to give 'em a sensation. We've tried to run this game as a purely moral and instructive entertainment, but we need the money and I reckon we've got to spring a cold deck on 'em. I guess you've got to stand for being attacked by an untamable, man-eating python.'

"'You can count me out on that,' says I. 'Every paper in the city would write me up as a victim of the demon Rum.' Merritt looked discouraged for a minute, but his face suddenly lighted up and I knew he had found a way.

"'Jim,' says he, 'if we only take half of our usual allowance of fire-water to-night we will have enough cash to buy some paint. Now there's that big white python; the only specimen ever captured, the "pythonatus fluidum lactalis giganticus,"' says he. That was one trouble with Merritt; he'd get so stuck on the language which he manufactured that he couldn't leave it out, even in our business consultations, and it used up a lot of time. 'That python is the straight goods,' says he, 'but he doesn't catch their eyes, so I'll paint the blame snake red, white and blue and christen him the "anacondus flagelum americanibus e pluribus unum," and give the reporters something to work on,' says he. 'That'll work up the snakologists and set 'em writing in the papers to prove that there isn't any such thing; but we've got the answer to that, for we can show 'em one at twenty-five cents per.'

"I never could stand for flim-flamming the generous public, but my meal ticket was punched so full of holes that it looked like a porous plaster, and I consented. Merritt spent most of the night decorating that python, and in the morning it looked like the pennant of a man-o'-war. I had to sit up and watch him, for he had the artistic temperament, and he was so carried away by his enthusiasm that if I hadn't restrained him he would have put on the coat-of-arms of the United States, eagle, motto and all.

"'Now,' says he, when he had finished and stepped back to admire his work, 'if that blame snake's own mother would know him if she met him on the street, I'm a Dutchman. If this don't make 'em sit up and take notice, then I'll go to night school to learn the show business.'"

"How did the scheme work?" asked the Proprietor, as the Press Agent paused to make the grand hailing sign of distress to the waiter.

"Work!" he answered. "How does a fake always work in New York? Why, P. T. Barnum had the mold for his petrified man made from the legs of one man and the body of another, and he didn't even take the trouble to smooth off the ridges where the edges met when he cast it in Portland cement. But that didn't prevent all of the scientific sharps who inspected it from certifying to its genuineness. His mermaid was manufactured from a codfish skin and a stuffed monkey; but the public stood for that, too, and he made a fortune out of 'em. Maybe you can't fool all of the people all of the time, but you can fool most of 'em most of the time; especially if they live in little old New York. Of course, we didn't pull off such a success as Barnum did; but we had no kick coming when we counted up the receipts for the next week. Merritt's lecture was a work of art and he manufactured language at a rate which would have given Noah Webster nervous prostration when he christened the python 'Old Glory,' and told about its combining the venomous qualities of the cobra and the strength of the boa-constrictor. The python was so stuck on its new colors that it nearly broke its neck turning around to admire itself and everything went lovely. Of course, there was the usual howl from the snakologists who knew it all, and 'Old Subscriber,' 'Citizen,' 'Pro Bono Publico' and the rest of the bunch wrote columns to the newspapers, denouncing us as frauds.

Grace snarled over the cubs.

"You know how those things work; everybody puts up an argument and then it's up to the fellow who is making the bluff to back it up with an offer to donate a sum of money to some charitable institution if he can't deliver the goods. We were well ahead of the game as a result of the advertising and had about two thousand to the good and Merritt got awful chesty. He had lied about that snake so much that he believed in it himself and it made me a little nervous one night when he offered to donate two thousand dollars to the 'Home for Decrepit Side Show Fakirs' if any one could produce another specimen like this one, short of the head waters of the Amazon. I wasn't scared so much by that as by what I feared he might say, for I knew they couldn't get another if they raked the universe with a fine-tooth comb, and sure enough, he was carried away by his enthusiasm and offered to bet our entire bank roll that the snake was a genuine 'American flag', such as had never been exhibited in any country.

"It was just our luck that there was a half-loaded tin-horn gambler in the audience that night; one of the kind that wears a yellow diamond and a checked suit with a white stove-pipe hat; and the only part of the speech that he understood was that somebody wanted to make a bet. That raised his sporting blood, and he climbed up to the platform and pulled out a roll of yellow boys that would choke a dog and peeled off twenty centuries.

"'I don't know much about snakes which bromide won't make chase themselves back to the woods,' says he as he plunked 'em down on the table. 'I ain't got your gift of gab, but money talks and I've got this pile to say that you can't tell the truth to save your neck. Just stack up your pile alongside of that and then trot out your snakelet.' I was feeling pretty sore on Merritt for making such a bluff, but, of course, we had to make good and between us we covered the bet. We had glass cages full of snakes all around the platform, but 'Old Glory' was in a big chest covered with gilt figures and brass chains and fastened with a padlock. Merritt was mad clear through at having his veracity questioned, but he looked pretty confident as he stuck the key in the lock.

"'It's a shame to take the money,' says he, as he eyed the gambler, 'but there's an old saying about the mental capacity of a man that is speedily separated from his bank roll, and I reckon you were away from home the last time the fool killer called.' The gam just smiled and kept his eye on the stakes, and Merritt gives the chains a rattle to wake up 'Old Glory' and throws back the lid of the chest.

"'Now,' says he, turning to the audience, 'if you'll kindly give me your attention I'll show you one of the most marvelous mysteries of Nature. It was procured by one of our special agents at the head waters of the Amazon at tremendous expense. It is a unique representative of the reptilian family and the sight of it should arouse pride in the hearts of all patriotic Americans; for as he unwinds his sinuous coils you will observe that while his head and neck are blue, the body, down to the tip of the tail, is marked with thirteen alternate stripes of red and white, giving this marvelous creature the appearance of being wrapped in that glorious emblem of liberty which waves over the land of the brave and the home of the free.' Merritt stops then, throwing out his chest and sticking his hand into the bosom of his coat to wait for the customary applause from the gallery to subside; but instead of the usual glad hands he was greeted with a roar of laughter and cat-calls and when he turned to look at the snake box, there was 'Old Glory' crawling out, looking ashamed of himself, for he was as white as the day he was born."

"What happened?" asked the Proprietor as the Press Agent sighed.

"Well, Merritt always had presence of mind, and as the sport gathered up our hard earned shekels he grabbed me by the arm and hurried me from the building. He knew that a Bowery audience was apt to follow cat-calls with antique eggs and vegetables of last season's vintage, and five minutes later we were trying to drown our sorrow.

"'Jim,' says Merritt, 'I made a big mistake, for I should have tattooed him. His beauty was only skin deep and the blame snake shed his skin.'"

THE ANIMAL BAROMETER
AND
THE ETERNAL FEMININE

Uncle Sam spends a large amount of money to forecast the weather twenty-four hours in advance, and the farmers and seafaring folk watch the bulletins no more eagerly than do the owners of the many shows whose harvest time is the brief summer season at Coney Island. Bad weather, especially if it comes on the first or last day of the week or a legal holiday, means a loss of hundreds of dollars to them, for if the skies are threatening, the holiday makers seek their pleasures nearer home and there are fewer people to give up their dimes and quarters under the seductive wheedling of the "barkers." Most of the show people look anxiously at the sky before retiring for the night, but there is one of them who finds an absolutely reliable forecast within the walls of his own building. Perhaps the signs and portents could not be translated by the weather clerk, but the Proprietor of the trained animal exhibition at Dreamland has been all of his life the companion of his charges, and has learned to recognize the meaning of unusual behavior or the shade of change in their voices which indicates an approaching storm.

There was not a cloud to be seen, and every star in the heavens was trying to rival the brilliant electric lights on the great tower as he sat at the café table in front of the Arena with the Stranger and the Press Agent after the night's performance was over, but he gave an exclamation of disappointment as a half-smothered roar came from the throat of one of the lions in the building.

"Rain to-morrow!" he said as the grumbling roar spread from cage to cage about the great semicircle. His companions smiled incredulously as they looked at the cloudless sky, but he repeated his prediction when the Stranger read "Fair and warmer to-morrow" from one of the evening papers. "I know all about the 'high and low pressure areas,'" he said, as he glanced at the chart. "A man in the show business has to study everything which may influence the attendance, but the behavior of my animals is a better barometer for local conditions than any aneroid which the Weather Bureau owns. In spite of the clear sky and the official predictions, I would wager that we shall have a bad storm within the next twenty-four hours, for those lions have the inherited knowledge of hundreds of generations of jungle-bred ancestors whose food supply depended largely upon the weather conditions."

"Do the other animals possess the same barometric accomplishments?" asked the Stranger skeptically, and the Proprietor laughed as he invited him to come inside and judge for himself. The Arena was always an uncanny place at night, for in the dim light only the glowing eyes of the animals could be distinguished in the cages, and the snarls and growls which came from behind the gratings conjured up visions of what might happen if one of the animals were loose and crouching on the seats of the auditorium or in the galleries, waiting for a meal of human flesh; but to-night it was worse than usual, for the unwonted restlessness of the animals was apparent even to the untrained senses of the Stranger.

The carnivora in captivity retain the habits of their relatives of the jungle and are more alert at night than in the daytime, but following a hard day's work in the exhibition cage they usually settle down for a few hours of sleep after receiving their evening allowance of meat. Although it was long past their resting time, not an eye was closed, and hundreds of pairs of bright spots were visible in the darkness as the beasts paced uneasily from end to end of their narrow dens. The elephants, whose arduous duties in the ring and on the ballyhoo brought such leg weariness that they were usually glad to be shackled for the night, were swaying their huge bodies from side to side and straining at the stout chains which fastened them and the shrill trumpeting of Tom, the largest one, was echoed and repeated by his companions, Roger and Alice. The roaring of the lions and the snarling of the tigers was mocked by the hideous laugh of the hyenas, and the discord of the strange noises was so disagreeable that the Stranger was relieved when they left the Arena and returned to the comparative quiet of the white-topped table.

"Every one of the great beasts jumped for her."

"It will be a severe storm," said the Proprietor as the waiter took their orders. "Any impending change makes them uneasy, but when every animal in the menagerie is in the state of excitement which you noticed to-night you can be assured that it means a very decided disturbance. It is a thing which animal trainers are ever watchful about, for most of the training is done at night, and it is not safe to work with them when they are in that frame of mind."

"But you give your advertised performances just the same," said the Press Agent.

"That's a different matter," answered the Proprietor. "When the Arena is lighted up and filled with people, the attention of the animals is distracted and they forget their nervousness, but a rehearsal at night is a lonesome proceeding, at best, and as the trainer devotes his attention to a single animal at a time it leaves the others free to think up mischief or to give way to their unreasoning fear. I had that borne in upon me in a way I shall never forget a few years ago when I was a younger hand at the business. I knew a good deal about handling animals, but not as much about managing men as I have learned since, and I used to forget that giving an order was not the same thing as seeing that it was executed. There was a trainer named Barton in my employ who did a pretty fair act with a group of six lions, but he was a brutal sort of a chap and punished his animals so severely that they went through their performance on the jump so as to get out of the exhibition cage, where blows were more plentiful than kind words. His act was a winner, all right, for he was absolutely fearless and the animals put up a bluff of snarling and snapping which made it exciting, but I disliked the man so much that I was glad to farm him out for a ten weeks' engagement on the vaudeville circuit.

"He wasn't a bad-looking chap and when he came back from his tour he brought with him one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen. She was an Egyptian who had been brought to this country with a troupe of dancers for one of the big exhibitions, and he met her and married her when they were performing in the same theater. Of course, I had absolutely no use for an Egyptian dancer with my show and I made the marriage an excuse to get rid of Barton; but he begged me to keep him on the plea that he was teaching her to do his act with the lions. She was so beautiful that I realized that she would be a great drawing card if she developed into a good trainer, so I consented and signed a contract with him for another year. I regretted it when I saw the first rehearsal, for it was painfully evident that she went into the cage only because she was more afraid of her husband than she was of the lions, and I didn't blame her; for while I might interfere to prevent ill-treatment of the lions, which were my property, I had no authority to protect her from his cruelty. They did most of the rehearsing at night, and I trusted to the fear which Barton had instilled in the lions to keep them from attacking her, for he always stood at the bars and they would cower down at the sound of his voice. You know it is never safe for two people to be in the cage with a group of animals at the same time unless they stand back to back and keep in one place, for if they are moving about an animal may run into one while endeavoring to escape from the other, and even the blow from a lion's tail might knock a man from his feet and then there would be trouble.

"Jim," says Merritt, ... "there is a great advantage in having a squaw for the top part of that there fish."

"Poor little Leotta used to go into the cage and try to keep the tell-tale tremble out of her voice when she gave her commands, but she could never learn to concentrate her whole attention on the animals and give up looking for a sign of approval from Barton out of the corner of her eye. I made it a point to see that there was always plenty of assistance near in case of accidents, and gave Barton strict orders to keep her out of the cage when the animals were under the influence of 'weather fear.' It was difficult for me to instruct or warn Leotta, for she understood English very little; but I helped her all I could, and gave her husband to understand that I would not allow any ill-treatment.

"In spite of all my precautions, I was always uneasy when she was in the cage, and when I had to be away from the show she was constantly in my mind. I had to go to the wharf one afternoon to superintend the unloading of a new lot of animals which had been sent from our English quarters, and owing to delays at the custom house it was late at night before I could start back for the show. Perhaps I had absorbed some of the weather wisdom of the animals from long association with them, but, at any rate, I was uneasy at the delays and as I whizzed along in the trolley I congratulated myself on my foresight in having warned Barton, as the thunder heads were gathering and I knew the animals would have the jumps and be unsafe to work with. But my heart sank as I drew near the building and saw that it was brilliantly lighted up, for that could only mean one thing at that time of night—Leotta must be rehearsing. The trainers usually have but one small cluster of lights, but I had ordered the electrician to turn on all the switches when she was in the cage, as I thought she would be less frightened and the animals more tractable in the full light.

"My guess was right: Barton, in disobedience of orders, had made her go into the cage, and he had taken advantage of my absence to break our iron-clad rule which forbids a trainer to drink. I saw the whole situation as soon as I entered the building, and I would have given the whole show to have the little woman safely on the right side of the bars. The animals in the dens were raising a worse row than they did to-night, and the lions in Leotta's group had forgotten their fear of the trainer in their greater fear of the approaching storm. They were ugly, and Barton, who was more than half-seas over, stood at the bars shouting abuse at his wife and the lions and jeering at her evident terror. I saw that the other trainers and keepers appreciated the danger, for they were gathered around, holding iron bars, Roman candles and pistols; but they had sense enough to know that any interference which would draw his attention from the cage would precipitate the trouble, and none of them could make Leotta appreciate the danger of her position. I went up to him quietly and told him that I thought he had better call the rehearsal off for the night, intending to square accounts with him as soon as Leotta was safely out of the cage; but the drink was in his brain and he turned on me and cursed me. Leotta gave a scream of terror as the brute turned his back on the cage and, as if by a preconcerted plan, every one of the six great beasts jumped for her.

"Barton knew that the game was up, and in his drunken rage he attacked me and it kept my hands full to manage him; but the others rushed for the cage, and while Bonavita and Stevenson beat off the lions with the help of the keepers on the outside who were firing pistols and Roman candles and using fire-extinguishers through the bars, Bobby Mack picked up Leotta and carried her outside. Of course, that ended Leotta's career in the show business and finished Barton's employment with me. The poor little thing's beauty was gone, for a lion's claws make deep cuts, and it was many a day before she was able to leave the hospital. You can see that I have reason to be confident of the accuracy of the predictions of my weather bureau, for if there had been no thunderstorm brewing I might have developed a sensational lion act."

"Or if Leotta had understood English," commented the Press Agent, as he beckoned to the waiter. "Of course, it is sometimes an advantage to have performers who can't converse with the audience, but it is mighty inconvenient if they can't understand the orders of the boss. I lost the chance of making a lot of money once, because a squaw who was working for us couldn't understand the white man's lingo. A guy named Merritt and myself were disappointed about getting a concession for a snake show at the Pan-American Exposition, and we found ourselves broke in Buffalo, which is separated from the Bowery by about five hundred miles of very tough walking when you haven't got the price of a railway ticket. Merritt was mad clean through at being thrown down by the Exposition managers, but he was an inventive genius and I knew that he would figure out a way to raise the price of transportation.

"A howl of terror from the platform."

"'Jim,' says he as we counted up our available assets and found that they were pretty well along toward a minus quantity, 'it makes me dead sore to be turned down this way without getting a run for our money, and it's up to us to increase our capital and incidentally give the bunch that done us dirt the double cross. Get your think tank working and see what it will produce.' I couldn't see a way out, but when a squaw from the Tonawanda Reservation, who was selling trailing arbutus, came up to us and offered us a nosegay, Merritt gives a whoop and claps me on the shoulder.

"'Jim,' says he, 'I've got it and we'll make our everlasting fortunes!' He commenced to question the squaw, but all the English she knew was 'ten cent a bunch,' and he didn't make much headway until a big buck Injin who had been watching her from across the street came over and butted in. It appeared that he was her husband, and when Merritt stated his proposition the buck accepted the terms without the formality of consulting the squaw. When the Exposition opened we had a big tent on an open lot across from the main entrance, with a life-sized picture of 'The Marvelous Mermaid' as big as a house. As I remarked, Merritt was an inventive genius and he had worked up a scheme to deceive the confiding public. He had provided a platform and carefully cut out a hole so that the squaw could stand on the ground and the edges of the hole fitted snugly about her waist. He made her lean forward and rest her chin in her hands in the conventionally accepted mermaid position, and then he fitted a fish tail which lay along the top of the platform, and it was so skillfully joined to her that it looked as if it grew there. She was a good-looking squaw and she certainly played her part and made an interesting picture.

"Of course, he couldn't explain to her what he wanted her to do, but he would tell the buck, who would carefully translate and impress the instructions upon her memory with the aid of a bale stick. The thing which he put most stress upon was that she was to remain absolutely still, no matter what happened. I sold the tickets and put up the spiel on the front, and Merritt lectured inside and we did a land-office business. Lots of smart guys came around and tried to get gay with the mermaid, but she couldn't understand their joshing and never cracked a smile. The blame tent caught fire one night when it was filled with people, and she had such a wholesome recollection of the bale stick that she kept as still as a cigar-store Indian until we had cleared the place and put the fire out.

"'Jim,' says Merritt as he looked her over admiringly after that experience, 'there is a great advantage in having a squaw for the top part of that there fish. She can't understand what the Willie boys say to her and nothing feazes her. A white gal would have had hysterics and given the whole snap away.' It gave Merritt a lot more confidence and we felt pretty safe after that experience, and neglected to have the buck repeat his bale-stick admonitions to her upon the necessity of cultivating repose of manner. Everything was lovely and we were turning hundreds of people away and making more money than the big show. One afternoon we were playing to a record house and Merritt was doing himself proud on his lecture.

"'Ladies and gentlemen,' says he, 'I have the honor to present to this intelligent audience a creature which is commonly, but erroneously, supposed to be extinct at the present day; but you have before you a living and convincing proof that mermaids still exist. I confess that until I was able to obtain this unique specimen, which was captured while basking in the sun and singing a love song upon an iceberg in the Antarctic Ocean, I shared the opinions of my fellow scientists that the mermaid was a fabulous or extinct creature; for during a lifetime devoted to exhibiting the mysterious marvels of nature to the American public it had never been my good fortune to acquire one. You will observe that she is half woman and half fish, and she is perfectly helpless when out of the water. She is unfortunately unable to express herself in any known tongue; in fact, she has never uttered a sound since her capture and we fear that she has lost her voice, which—' Just then he was interrupted by a howl of terror from the platform, which was followed by a roar of laughter from the audience, and when he turned he saw the squaw standing up and trying to wrap the fake tail around a pair of well-developed, copper-colored legs. Her face was as pale as a squaw's face could get and Merritt knew the jig was up. I was peeking in the door, and when I saw what had happened I gathered up the box-office receipts and faded away. I met Merritt that evening in our usual saloon, and underneath a pair of black eyes and a battered-up phiz I could see that he was wearing a look of deep disgust.

"'Jim,' says he, 'this is what comes from pinning your faith to a woman and not appreciating the weakness of the sex. She faced the danger of being burned alive and never turned a hair; but when she saw a measly little mouse crawl under the platform she busted up the whole show.'"

The Stranger said good-night and started for the city, but before he reached the railway station he was drenched by the downpour which the Proprietor had predicted.

MAKING A STAR LION AND AN
INTERRUPTED TEMPERANCE
MEETING

"You were not in this part of the country when New York was in an uproar for two days over the escape of one of my lions," said the Proprietor to the Stranger as they joined the Press Agent. "I suppose that ninety per cent. of the people who remember it think that it was all a fake, but I can assure you that I put in the most strenuous forty-eight hours of my career while he was loose, and it pretty nearly decided me to give up the show business. It was my first experience at running an independent show, and after great persuasion I had induced my father to let me bring some boxing kangaroos, two young lions and Wallace, a fine big brute about fifteen years old, from our English establishment to the States. Wallace was already a famous—or infamous—lion in England, where he had the score of three trainers to his credit. He had received the name of 'The Mankiller' over there, and they were rather relieved to have me get him out of the country.

"His last victim was a Frenchman, one of the best-known trainers in the business, and he went into the cage to subdue Wallace on a wager. He won, and a remarkable performance it was, but I won't take the time to tell you about that now. He made just one little mistake: his vanity got the better of him when he turned his back on the lion to bow to the audience after remaining in the cage for ten minutes. As I said, he won the bet, and it about paid the funeral expenses of what was left of him. After that the only man who could go near Wallace was a half-breed American Indian from up near Cape Cod; Broncho Boccacio, he called himself. I don't know what the other half of him was, and I don't remember how he happened to be with our English show, but all sorts and conditions of men drift into the animal training business. At any rate, he was the only man who could do anything with Wallace, and that wasn't much. He would get into the cage and chase him around a bit and then jump out quick—always backward after seeing what happened to the Frenchman. I brought him along to take especial charge of the brute. It took a couple of days to get the animals through the customs, and in the meantime I cast about for quarters and finally rented a stable on Eighteenth Street to keep them in until I should secure an engagement." He took a pencil from his pocket and drew a plan on the white table top.

"There was a loose lion downstairs and a nurse and two children in the loft."

"The stable was arranged in this way: here in the front was the carriage house with these narrow stairs at the side leading up to the loft. On each side of the door was a window facing on the street, and back of the carriage room was the stable proper—two stalls and a loose-box. On one side of the stable was a saloon and on the other a carpenter shop, so I didn't expect much complaint from my neighbors, as my men patronized one, while I ordered the carpenter to build a traveling cage for Wallace which would slide on wheels, as our English cages were too heavy to handle in a country where labor is as high as it is here. I moved the lions up to the stable to let them rest a bit after the voyage and started to look for an engagement. It was a hard row to hoe, as I was not known in this country, and the best I could do was a booking at a dime museum for a month, and I had to take a lowish price at that, but I ordered a big nine sheet poster and trusted to luck to make more out of them later.

"The lions were in three cages in the stable, and in one of the stalls I had a trotting horse which had been purchased for my brother in England, and which I kept there until I should have an opportunity to ship it to the other side. The kangaroos were in the loft, and a couple of days after they were all settled my two little girls came over from the hotel with me one morning and went up there with the nurse to play with them while I went into the carpenter shop next door to settle for the new cage, which had just been delivered. Broncho, as soon as he struck his native soil, had discovered a camp of other Indians on the Bowery and spent most of his time in their encampment, leaving a Cockney Englishman in charge of the lions and the horse. I intended to wait until he arrived before shifting Wallace to the new cage, but the Englishman thought he would show his cleverness and attempted to do it alone without waiting for us. He threw a piece of meat into the new cage and then rolled it up to the old one, and when the doors were opposite each other he opened them. Of course Wallace made a spring for the meat in the new cage, but he struck the edge of the door, and as the Cockney had neglected to block the wheels the cage rolled away and the keeper gave a yell and bolted for the stairs. There was a loose lion downstairs—and a bad one at that—and the nurse and two children in the loft.

"The first I knew of it was from the nurse, who had grabbed the children and stood with them in the door which had been used to pass the hay in, yelling 'Fire!' and 'Murder!' but I knew that there was hell to pay as soon as I reached the street, by the sound which came from the stable. We got a ladder from the carpenter shop and hustled the nurse and children down to the street, and then I went up to the loft, while the nurse and the Cockney held the small door from the stable to the street, which could not be fastened from the outside until the carpenter spiked some plank over it.

"A look into the stable convinced me that I did not want to go down the stairs, for with one blow Wallace had converted a thousand-dollar trotting horse into two dollars' worth of lion meat, and he was crouched on the body, which he had dragged from the stall, clawing at its throat and drinking the blood. The place looked like a shambles, and the growls which came from Wallace as the other lions threw themselves against the bars of their cages in their efforts to get out and join in the feast were redoubled when he caught sight of my head through the trap-door. I slammed it down and drew the kangaroo cage on top of it and then went down to the street to see that the windows and doors were securely boarded up. A great crowd was gathering and I was afraid that the police would shoot the brute, for I saw the possibilities of an advertisement which would more than pay for the expensive meal which Wallace was making from the trotting horse.

"His vanity got the better of him when he turned his back on the lion, to bow to the audience."

"Just as I reached the street, Broncho strolled up. As I said, he was a queer-looking guy; his skin was copper-colored and he had piercing black eyes and long, fuzzy black hair which fell down to his shoulders. His nose was hooked and something about his face always reminded me of a bird of prey. He was only a half-breed, but when I told him what had occurred he was all Indian and he drew a long knife and started for the Cockney, who gave only one look at the expression on Broncho's face and then started for Harlem, touching only the high spots until he was quite out of sight. Broncho didn't chase him; he just looked after him with a smile on his face, glad to see him disappear, as there had been more or less bad blood between them for a long time. Then he came to me and laughed at the idea of danger and offered to go into the stable and put Wallace back in the cage. I knew that it would be impossible until the lion had gorged himself on horse meat, and now that the damage was done I was in no hurry to allay the excitement until the police and reporters arrived. We didn't have to wait long, for the crowd had grown until the street was blocked, and, of course, the reporters asked more than a thousand questions. When I had worked the sensation up pretty well I consented to let Broncho take his training rod and go down, and I went with him carrying a club and a pitchfork. Things commenced to happen right away, for Wallace didn't wait for the call of time, but sailed right into us, and when I saw that he was getting the better of Broncho I made a bluff at going back to the carcass of the horse. Wallace bounded back to protect it and crouched on it, snarling viciously, but the delay gave me a chance to help Broncho up the stairway. There was not enough of his trousers left to wad a gun, and while I was bandaging up a deep claw wound in his thigh that advertisement seemed less and less important to me, and I would have given a good deal to have Wallace safely behind the bars of his cage again. He was contracted for four weeks anyway, and it takes a pretty big sensation to be remembered for more than thirty days in New York.

"Well, we fussed about all day, trying to figure out some way to get the beggar back in his cage, and I got an earache listening to advice from people who had never seen a lion, but who considered themselves experts. At sunset Wallace still held the fort and the streets were blocked in all directions, for the afternoon papers were out with extras with scare-heads. The boards over the windows made the interior of the stable so dark that no one could see into it, but the roars which came from it gave the spectators all the thrills they were entitled to and caused a stampede every few minutes. We tried to drive Wallace into the cage with a stream of water from the fire plug, but he only shook his head and growled at it, so we gave it up and waited for daylight. There were about forty policemen and a crowd of reporters about the place all night, and I was getting nervous for fear some fool would shoot the lion, whose value was increasing every minute, so I kept awake and did a heap of thinking.

"Broncho was only a half-breed."

"I knew that Wallace would fight for his 'kill' as long as any of the meat was left, so we rigged up a tackle to try and draw the carcass out. We were all ready at daylight and the crowd was bigger than ever. Say, if you want to count the idle people in New York just get up a free show at any hour of the day or night and they will all come. There must have been over a thousand loafing about the street all night. We were just getting ready to make a try for the horse when the idlers outside gave a cheer, and I saw an express wagon loaded with nets and ropes and all sorts of animal catching stuff drive up. Tody Hamilton, Barnum's press agent, had caught on to the possibilities of an advertisement, and sent to the winter quarters at Bridgeport for some of their animal men to come down and capture a loose lion. They supposed it was in Central Park, and when they found it was in a stable the job looked easy to them. One of them, a man named McDonald, had been with our English show, and when he heard that it was Wallace they were to tackle his enthusiasm seemed to melt. He told the others a few anecdotes of the lion, and two of them went to find the Cockney, I guess, for we never saw them again.

"We managed to throw a slip noose around the carcass from the stairs, and when we passed the end of the rope out of the window there must have been five hundred men pulling on it from the way that horse's body slid across the floor. The four of us stood around the trap-door to beat Wallace back, and when he realized that he was losing his prey it kept us busy.

"Say, a dead horse seems to have more legs than a centipede when you try to drag it through a narrow space, and they all stick out in different directions. Of course, this one stuck and then there was more trouble, for when I took an axe to dismember it, a cop threatened to arrest me for cutting up a horse in the city limits. It took three hours to satisfy the red-tape requirements and get a permit from the Board of Health, and then I had a long, sickening job, for we had to haul up what was left of the poor beast in fragments, and all the time Wallace was snapping at them or rushing at us. We gave him several nasty cracks over the snout, the only place where a lion seems to be sensitive to pain, but it only made him uglier than ever and I knew that there was a pretty fight ahead of us. It was a case of 'Perdicaris alive or Raisouli dead' with me, for the police were getting impatient, and I knew they would shoot him if we did not get him caged before night.

"We drew lots to see who should be the first to go down, and I think that McDonald stacked the straws, for Broncho won—or lost—I was second, the other Barnum man third and McDonald last; but he made good after we got down there, and it was what the President would have called a 'crowded hour.' If Wallace hadn't been full of horse meat, which made him a trifle slow, I think he would have chased the bunch of us out, and as it was he gave us all we wanted to do. We used blank cartridges, Roman candles, training rods and whips, and I learned afterward that the crowd outside thought we were all being torn to pieces, but we finally conquered and it was a singed and battered lion which jumped back into the den and gave me a chance to slam the door. The noise of the clicking lock sounded good to me, and I went up the stairs with a lighter heart, in spite of tattered clothes and a scratched hand and bruised body. I knew that I had a small fortune in the beast, but I nearly cried when I went into the saloon to freshen up, and the first thing I saw was the poster with the announcement that Wallace would be shown at the dime museum. I knew that it would make the reporters, who had been writing columns of space, suspect that it was all a fake and prearranged. The manager was afraid that I would renege on my contract after all the free advertising, but he didn't know me.

"We didn't have any regular snake charmer, but Merritt made himself up for a Hindoo fakir."

"Sure enough, the reporters came for me in a body while I was still tired and dirty from the fight and worn out with anxiety and loss of sleep. They accused me of having put up a job on them, but I guess the sight of my condition convinced them of my sincerity, for only one paper even hinted at any crookedness, and that proved the best advertisement in the whole business.

"It was the Sun which came out in an article about Wallace, saying that he was toothless and decrepit from old age, and that there had never been the slightest danger from him. If the reporter who wrote it had gone into the stable with us, I don't think he would have written the article. I did my own announcing in those days and I always started off with the announcement, 'Ladies and gentlemen! If you see it in the Sun, it's so, and the Sun says that Wallace is played out and toothless from old age.' Then I would make a move to the front of the cage, and Wallace, who had a special hatred for me, would spring at the bars and show as pretty a set of fangs as you would wish to see and I was always sure of a laugh.

"Well, I showed Wallace in New York and other cities for thirty straight weeks and got back the value of that trotter a good many times over," continued the Proprietor as he rose from the table. "His name is one to conjure with, even yet, and nearly every lion which is exhibited in the side shows at the county fairs is billed as 'Wallace, the Untamable!' The original Wallace is still alive and at our English breeding establishment." He said good-night and left the table, the Press Agent looking regretfully after him.

"That's just like the boss," he complained as he watched the retreating figure. "He takes the center of the stage until he has told his story, and when my turn comes to get in the limelight he does the disappearing act. That was a pretty good story, but talking of escapes, I can tell you about an escape that is worth talking about. It happened when a guy named Merritt and myself were running a snake show next to a camp meeting down on the Jersey coast. We didn't have any regular snake charmer, but we bought a lot of wrigglers from a dealer down on the Bowery and Merritt made himself up for a Hindoo fakir. He would get into the cage with them and those snakes would wrap themselves about him from his head to his toes and it was an awe-inspiring sight. He taught them to stand up on their tails and dance while he played on a tin whistle and to do other pretty little tricks, but the great and original stunt was what he called the 'Interminable Snake,' when one would grab the biggest snake's tail in his mouth, another would fasten onto him, and so on until the whole blame lot looked like one big serpent. Say, those snakes got so stuck on that game that they would do it for sport without the word of command. Whenever one started to move around the cage another would grab his tail, and the first thing you knew the whole bunch was going around in a string and the sight of it was enough to make a man swear off for a year.

"We were doing a fine business until a temperance lecturer set up a show a little way off, and that cut into us so that there was nothing much doing. The crowd would walk right past the entrance to our 'Highly Moral and Instructive Exhibition,' and go on to listen to the temperance guy telling them about the evils of drink, as illustrated by the horrible living examples which he had upon the platform. You see that was a free show, while ours cost a quarter—and cheap at the price.

"One afternoon after I had cracked my voice trying to draw the crowd without landing one of 'em, Merritt comes to me, and as we saw the crowd pouring in to the temperance show, we looked at each other and shook our heads in sorrow.

"'Jim,' says Merritt, 'that guy down there has got you skinned to death on the ballyhoo, and it's up to you to go over there and get next to the attraction and see if we can't cop it out for our show. I hate to ask it of you,' says he, 'knowing your views on the temperance question, but business is business and this ain't no time for sentiment.' It went against the grain, but I knew it must be done, so I went down to the lecture. I wasn't wise to the game, but I was anxious not to miss a trick, so I went right up to the front, and the first thing I knew I was seated on the mourners' bench, right under the platform. As soon as the lecturer came on I piped him for a guy that used to pull teeth on the Bowery with a brass band accompaniment and a gasoline torch, and I remembered that at that time he could punish more booze than any man I ever knew. He had the gift of gab all right, and he had picked up a couple of panhandlers for horrible examples and they looked the part. If either one of them had ever drawn a sober breath in twenty years he should have sued his face for libel, and they looked as if they had been towed behind a trolley car from the Battery to Fort George.

"Well, the ex-jaw carpenter cut loose in good form, and he soon had every one worked up, telling the horrible things which alcohol did to your interior lining, and giving a description of the menagerie which a man sees when he has the jim-jams, which would have done credit to the boss lecturer in there." He pointed with his thumb to the Arena, and the alert waiter, taking it for a signal, refilled the glasses.

"He did it so well that he sort of had me going, and I was beginning to think that possibly I was taking a trifle too much," continued the Press Agent, as he sampled the fresh drink. "I was giving the matter serious thought, when my attention was attracted by one of the panhandlers who was nudging his partner.

"'Bill,' says he, 'tell the old man to put on full steam ahead, for I'm backsliding and need encouragement. I'm afraid I've got 'em again. Look there!' Bill looks down the aisle and gets uneasy, too.

"'Hank,' says he, 'I've got 'em, likewise, only that ain't my usual kind of snake, coz he ain't got no plug hat with a red flannel band on it; but it's me for the bromide and the simple life.'

"'It's this damn Jersey whiskey that's changed 'em,' answers Bill. 'Mine always has gorillas ridin' 'em.' Well, I looked around and I would have been scared myself if I hadn't recognized our own bunch of snakes, each one of 'em with the tail of the snake in front of him in his mouth. Old 'Limber Larry'—we called him that on account of his habit of going to sleep curled up in a true lover's knot—was in the lead, and behind him came about half a mile of snakes.

"They were festooning themselves up the aisle, coming slow, because there were a couple of them which could not move very fast, and when the gait got too lively they used to bite their leaders' tails. Old Larry was raising his head and looking around every few feet, and just when the lecturer had reached the most thrilling part of his 'Ten Nights in a Barroom' spiel he caught Larry's eye and the meeting adjourned, sine die, right there. You couldn't see him for dust as he broke for the nearest 'speakeasy,' and the two panhandlers were hanging on to his coat tails.

"Just then Merritt comes in looking worried, for he had gone to sleep and let 'em get away from him, but when he sees 'em he takes his tin whistle out of his pocket and goes back to the show, tooting it like a blasted Pied Piper, the snakes following along as meek as Mary's little lamb, and most of the audience goes with him at a quarter per."

"Did business improve?" asked the Stranger.

"Improve? Why, my boy, after we put that temperance show out of business we just turned 'em away for three months. Not only did we do a good business, but the hotel people put us on the free list at the bar, because Merritt used to take 'em down in 'Interminable Snake' formation for a dip in the ocean every morning, and the hotel press agent wrote it up as the daily appearance of the gigantic sea serpent."