Theatrical and Circus Life / or, Secrets of the Stage, Green-Room and Sawdust Arena

by John J. Jennings

VOICE II.

The second voice is the more easy to be acquired. It is the voice by which all ventriloquists make a supposed person speak from a long distance, or from, or through the ceiling. In the first place, with your back to the audience, direct their attention to the ceiling by pointing to it or by looking intently at it. Call loudly, and ask some question, as though you believed some person to be concealed there. Make your own voice very distinct, and as near the lips as possible, inasmuch as that will help the illusion. Then in exactly the same tone and pitch answer; but, in order that the same voice may seem to proceed from the point indicated, the words must be formed at the back part of the roof of the mouth. To do this the lower jaw must be drawn back and held there, the mouth open, which will cause the palate to be elevated and drawn nearer to the pharynx, and the sound will be reflected in that cavity, and appear to come from the roof. Too much attention cannot be paid to the manner in which the breath is used in this voice. When speaking to the supposed person, expel the words with a deep, quick breath.

When answering in the imitative manner, the breath must be held back and expelled very slowly, and the voice will come in a subdued and muffled manner, little above a whisper, but so as to be well distinguished. To cause the supposed voice to come nearer by degrees, call loudly, and say, "I want you down here," or words to that effect. At the same time make a motion downwards with your hand. Hold some conversation with the voice and cause it to say, "I am coming," or "Here I am," each time indicating the descent with the hand. When the voice is supposed to approach nearer, the sound must alter, to denote the progress of the movement. Therefore let the voice at every supposed step, roll, as it were, by degrees, from the pharynx more into the cavity of the mouth, and at each supposed step, contracting the opening of the mouth, until the lips are drawn up as if you were whistling. By so doing the cavity of the mouth will be very much enlarged. This will cause the voice to be obscured, and so appear to come nearer by degrees. At the same time, care must be taken not to articulate the consonant sounds plainly, as that would cause the disarrangement of the lips and cavity of the mouth; and in all imitative voices the consonants must scarcely be articulated at all, especially if the ventriloquist faces the audience. For example: suppose the imitative voice is made to say, "Mind what you are doing, you bad boy," it must be spoken, as if it were written, "'ind 'ot you're doing, you 'ad whoy." This kind of articulation may be practised by forming the words in the pharynx, and then sending them out of the mouth by sudden expulsions of the breath clean from the lungs at every word. This is most useful in ventriloquism, and to illustrate it we will take the man on the roof as an illustration. This is an example almost invariably successful, and is constantly used by skilled professors of the art. As we have before repeatedly intimated, the eyes and attention of the audience must be directed to the supposed spot from whence the illusive voice is supposed to proceed:—

Student: Are you up there, Jem?

Voice: Hallo! who's that?

Student: It's I! Are you nearly finished?

Voice: Only three more slates to put on, master.

Student: I want you here, Jem.

Voice: I am coming directly.

Student: Which way, Jem?

Voice: Over the roof and down the trap. (Voice is supposed to be moving, as the student turns and points with his finger.)

Student: Which way?

Voice (nearer): Through the trap and down the stairs.

Student: How long shall you be?

Voice: Only a few minutes. I am coming as fast as I can.

The voice now approaches the door, and is taken up by the same tone, but produced as in the first voice.

* * * * *

I have room to add only a few polyphonic imitations. To imitate the tormenting bee, the student must use considerable pressure on his chest, as if he was about to groan suddenly, but instead of which, the sound must be confined and prolonged in the throat: the greater the pressure, the higher will be the faint note produced, and which will perfectly resemble the buzzing of the bee or wasp. Now, to imitate the buzzing of a bluebottle fly, it will be necessary for the sound to be made with the lips instead of the throat; this is done by closing the lips very tight, except at one corner, where a small aperture is left; fill that cheek full of wind, but not the other, then slowly blow or force the wind contained in the cheek out of the aperture: if this is done properly, it will cause a sound exactly like the buzzing of a bluebottle fly.

The noise caused by planing and sawing wood can also be imitated without much difficulty, and it causes a great deal of amusement. The student must, however, bear in mind that every action must be imitated as well as the noise, for the eye assists to delude the ear. We have even seen ventriloquists carry this eye deception so far as to have a few shavings to scatter as they proceed, and a piece of wood to fall when the sawing is ended. To imitate planing, the student must stand at a table a little distance from the audience, and appear to take hold of a plane and push it forward: the sound as of a plane is made as though you were dwelling on the last part of the word hush—dwell upon the sh a little, as tsh, and then clip it short by causing the tongue to close with the palate, then over again. Letters will not convey the peculiar sound of sawing—it must be studied from nature.

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CHAPTER XXXIII.
"ON THE ROAD."

Theatrical life is full enough of business and bustle, even when a company is playing a long engagement in a large city; but when "on the road," travelling from town to town—playing here a week and there a week, with one-night stands in the intervening "villages," actors and managers find it no easy task to retain their health and spirits, and keep up with their "dates;" and with all but a few organizations located almost permanently in New York, thus flitting from place to place—a round of anxiety and railroad experiences that lasts through forty weeks of each year—makes up the easy, glorious, and blissful existence that so many people outside of the profession imagine is the unalloyed portion of those who are in it.

As much of the business of a company's season as can be arranged in New York during the summer, is attended to by the manager. He meets the prominent theatrical managers of the country on "The Square" and makes dates at their respective houses for his attraction. Having located his route as to the large cities he proceeds to fill in the intervals with one or two-night stands in smaller places, and this being done he and his company are ready to take the road just as soon as the season begins. The contracts for cities like Chicago, Cincinnati, Louisville, New Orleans, and St. Louis are made and signed in New York during the summer vacation. The others are completed while the company is on the road.

Ahead of every attraction is a press agent, herald, avant-courier, or, as he began to call himself two years ago, a business manager. When he invades a town the first place he makes a rush for is the most available opera house or hall, with the proprietor of which he makes a contract like the following:—

Belleville, Ill......... 1882.

This is to certify that I have rented the hall (room or theatre) known as ................ to the Madison Square Theatre Company for .......... night ...., viz ....................... for the sum of ......... dollars per night, which includes license, stage hands, ushers, ticket-seller, etc. Said hall, passage-way, and stage to be well lighted, and also to be kept clean and well warmed, with services of janitor and privilege of matinee included.

Signed:

.................. Lessee.

Witness:

................ Business Manager.

Numerous other contracts are made,—for hauling baggage, for carriages and omnibus, for orchestra, etc. The hotel contract, which is as follows, is very explicit:—

"This is to certify that the landlord of ..................... does hereby agree with the Agent of the Madison Square Theatre Company to board and lodge the said company, consisting of ........ persons, more or less, for .......... days, more or less, at the rate of ........... cents per day for each person. Three meals and one (night's) lodging to constitute a day's board, and for any time less than one day the charge shall be at the same rate per diem as is above mentioned. Fires to be furnished at .............. cents per each room. No charge to be made under the above agreement providing the party see fit to go elsewhere. Agent to be kept at same rates.

..................... Landlord."

Having got through with making contracts the agent begins to "bill the town." The amount of billing that is done depends largely upon the reputation of the star or attraction, and the manner in which the newspapers have been worked. An actress like Mary Anderson puts out but about one hundred three-sheet bills—a three-sheet bill being the ordinary poster that is seen upon a single bill-board—in any of the large cities. Sarah Bernhardt and Adelina Patti, who were kept before the public by the press for many months before they came to this country, needed but a few three-sheet bills and a simple announcement of their coming in the newspapers. Mrs. Langtry, Christine Nilsson, and Henry Irving will be billed in the same economical way when they reach our shores. Edwin Booth and John McCullough, like Mary Anderson, use only a small quantity of three-sheet bills for advertising on the walls. These people require few lithographs, and are likewise fortunate in not being required to buy large space in the papers. Nearly all the minor melodramatic and comedy attractions take to the circus style of advertising. Charles L. Davis, of "Alvin Joslyn" fame, who wears the largest diamond and carries the finest watch in the profession, boasts that he always likes to bill against a circus. When he was in St. Louis during the season of 1881–2, Mr. W. R. Cottrell, the city bill-poster, told me that Davis put out about four thousand sheets, and everlastingly sprinkled the windows with colored lithographs. Mr. Cottrell also told me that this does not approach the lavishness of circuses in decorating the fences and walls and bill-boards of cities. These latter usually put out not less than ten thousand sheets, and the Great London Show a few seasons ago would spread from eighteen to twenty thousand sheets before the eyes of a city having a population of four hundred thousand. The bill-poster gets three cents per sheet for posting, and $1 per hundred for distributing lithographs, so that, as will be understood, a circus or a theatrical attraction like Charles L. Davis is a bonanza to the bill-poster.

From the big type of the bill-boards the advance agent naturally turns his attention to the smaller, but probably more effective, type of the newspaper. He rushes into the editorial rooms like a whirlwind, if he is a cyclonic agent, asks in a voice of thunder for the dramatic critic, and when that gentleman is pointed out, after depositing a gilt-edged card and bestrewing the journalist's desk with a mass of notices from the Oakland Bugle, the Bragtown Boomerang, and forty other equally important and severely critical journals, proceeds to talk so loudly that he disturbs all the writers in the room, and has the managing editor on the point nineteen times out of twenty of ordering him out of the office.

"I tell you what, my boy," he shouts, "we just laid 'em out cold in Pilot Knob last night. Just got a telegram from the manager. See here: 'House jammed to the doors; hundreds turned away; great enthusiasm; big sales to-morrow night.' Now that's no gag, but the dead square, bang-up truth, s'elp me God."

"I see the Horse-Tail Bar Sentinel gives you folks fits," the dramatic critic quietly suggests. "It says your play is bad and your company worse—how is that?"

"Oh that fellow is a bloody duffer," the agent replies at the top of his voice. "Tell you the truth, we had a little trouble with him about comps. He wanted a bushel of 'em, and because we wouldn't give 'em up blasted us. But we did a rattling good business all the same, and don't you forget it?"

And in this way the cyclonic agent rattles along, tormenting everybody within hearing distance until he gets ready to go; and when he is gone there is a sigh of relief all around the office. The managing editor comes out and asks the dramatic critic:—

"Who was that d—d fool?"

"The agent of the Doorstep Comic Opera Company," the dramatic critic replies.

"Well, the next time he comes in here just tell him this is not a deaf and dumb asylum. We don't want any serenades from side-show blowers. Don't give his d—d old company more than two lines, and make it less than that if you can."

Fortunately for the profession this style of advance agent is dying out, and men who understand newspapers better are coming in. There are many real gentlemen, clever, quiet and effective, in the business, like Mr. E. D. Price, formerly of the Detroit Post and Tribune; Frank Farrell, who graduated from the New Orleans Times office, and others who have forsaken journalism for the equally arduous, but more lucrative positions that enterprising and long-headed theatrical managers offer them.

The advance agent sees that the hall or theatre is in proper condition, looks after the sale of reserved seats, distributes his "comps" as judiciously as circumstances will allow, and confronts everywhere he goes the cunning and omnipresent dead-head—that abomination of the show business who will spend $5 with an agent to get a free ticket from him, when admission and a reserved sent may be purchased for $1. If the dead-head fails to circumvent the agent he quietly awaits the coming of the company, when he lies in ambush for the manager, of whom he demands a pass or his life. In fact, the manager often has to undo a great deal that his agent has done in a town, and to do over again much that the avant-courier had seemingly done in a satisfactory manner. The company, too, frequently find the way not so smooth or pleasant as the agent has represented it to be: the hall or theatre in which the performance is to be given is often a dingy, dismal place that is not only without conveniences of any kind, but what is worse, may not be proof against anything like demonstrative weather; the hotel fare is bad, and the accommodations no better; the mayor, the town council, and sometimes the prominent citizens, must have free passes; the local papers want hatfuls of complimentary tickets, and with a house half filled with dead-heads and one-third of the benches empty, they must, in the face of most discouraging circumstances, appear as entertainers or meet with the severest denunciations of the pigmy press and the most galling criticism from the ungrateful army of dead-heads.

Now and then an actor or an actress contracts a cold during a barn-storming tour, and the nomadic life not being calculated to aid the healing power of medicines, the seeds of death are sown, and soon the played-out player sinks from sight, and without causing a single ripple upon the surface of the great sea of life, goes down to the grave. The agent and the manager, too, share this danger, and altogether the life of professional people when "on the road" is not so bright or joyful as to cause any one acquainted with their trials and troubles to envy them their lot.

"ON THE ROAD."

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CHAPTER XXXIV.
THE GREEN-EYED AND OTHER MONSTERS.

To the outside world the player's life seems always bright—a rose-carpeted path with sunshine forever straying about the feet and breath of the sweetest gardens always in their atmosphere. To the players themselves, notwithstanding the hard work, it has the same beauty and fascinations that other professions have for those who have entered them. Lotta receiving the wild plaudits of her newsboy admirers—for all over the country the street Arabs express their willingness to "do ennythin' in de world fur Lottie"—accepting the baskets of flowers they send her with the pennies they have pooled, and doing her utmost to respond to a score of encores in response to their appeals is as charming a little picture of perfect happiness and contentment as we could find anywhere. Judic, the great opera bouffe singer, peddling cherries, at the great charity fair in Paris, from two panniers borne by a jackass, crying, "Buy my cherries, monsieur. I don't sell them dear. Five francs, the little basket," is a noble example of the generosity that distinguishes the profession of which she is a member. A popular American actress selling photographs for a little cripple she met in the street, and who had been rebuffed at several, is another example of the leaning towards charity and the kind-heartedness of a class of people against whom many bigots raise their hands and to whom they turn their backs, saying, as the Rev. Mr. Sabini said, that he didn't want to have anything to do with actors. The reader has probably heard the story, but I will repeat it here: George Holland, the actor, died in his eightieth year, on December 20, 1870. He was a player of exceeding merit in his day, and his demise was widely and deeply regretted. Friends gathered around his casket in the awful moment when they were to part with him forever. The rites of the church were wanted for him, of course, and an actor friend went to Rev. Sabini and asked him to officiate. He declined, saying: "I want to have nothing to do with an actor. There is a little place around the corner were they do these things." And sure enough there was, and the actors took their dead friend into "the little place around the corner," and Dr. Houghton said the last prayer over the dead player. That "place" is now known among actors and by the public too as "the little church around the corner." It is the Church of the Transfiguration, and is on Twenty-ninth Street near Madison Avenue.

It is only occasionally that scandal is given by the theatrical profession, but these few and far-between occasions are sufficient to keep alive the bad opinion that certain people have of actors and actresses. It is true the class is weak at many points, as are other classes, but as I have urged before, they maintain a higher standard of morality and adorn their circle better than any other people whose paths are strewn as plentifully with temptations. At the beginning of the eighteenth century the stage was in very bad condition because society was in a worse condition, and if there is frailty in the ranks of actresses of to-day, and weaknesses among actors, it is because their surroundings compel them to be what they are, and even under this compulsion they can hold their heads as high as their neighbors and look them in the face without feeling that they are any worse than the rest of the world, even if they are so bad. It is my purpose to say something about the dark side of theatrical life that the reader may see just what there is in the talk indulged by the scandal-mongers of the anti-theatrical class, and that it may be known that their indiscretions and their sins are no more heinous than the sins and transgressions of other people, and that in very few instances are they the outcome of the actor or actress's professional surroundings.

The estrangement of Edwin Booth and his wife or the divorce of Edwin Forrest from his wife did not cause the world to think any the less of these gentlemen as actors, and the events did not bring any opprobrium upon the profession. Sarah Bernhardt's open avowal that her children were fatherless and they were only "accidents" was a frank confession of an early indiscretion that almost everybody was ready to forgive. She was not received by society in this country, but society knelt before her at the shrine of Thespis, as they did at the feet of Mme. Patti, who flaunted Nicolini in the face of the public, as the successor of the Marquis de Caux in all the rights of a husband although there never had been any marriage ceremony to make the tenor the legal companion of the beautiful diva. For the sake of their art the sins of these two gifted women were partially forgotten, and while society could not open its doors to Mlle. Bernhardt or Mme. Patti, it went readily to the open doors through which the presence of the actress and of the songstress was to be reached.

A New York correspondent says: "Having mentioned two French actresses, let me drop into the true story of Bernhardt and Colombier's quarrel, and the book about America which has been put forth in Colombier's name. When Bernhardt came over here, she was accompanied by Jehan Soudan, a Parisian writer. He was very small, closely buttoned up to the neck, very bushy haired, and very much like a particularly mild and girlish divinity student. For all that, he was the accredited temporary lover of Bernhardt. His other errand was to write an account of her tour, to be published as from her own pen. While in this city he was an object of considerable ridicule, and his name was maltreated from Jehan Soudan into Sudden Johnny. But Colombier, the fair and fat actress of Bernhardt's company, did not regard him as comic. Quite on the contrary, she fell in love with him, and he fell in love with her. However, this new reciprocity of hearts was kept hidden until near the end of the journey. Then it came out through Sudden Johnny carelessly kissing Colombier too loud in a thin-partitioned dressing-room. The smack was heard by Bernhardt. I don't imagine that she cared much for Johnny, or would have missed him from the ranks of her favored admirers; but it made her just as mad as she could be to lose him to Colombier. Now, Colombier's beauty was marred by a deflection of her nose to one side. That's not much, for the chances are ten to one that the sides of your own face don't exactly agree. Try a glass critically, and see. Well, when Colombier emerged from her room with Johnny, to go on the stage, Sarah regarded her quizzically, and then said something in French equivalent to:—

"'Ah, my dear, I fear you kiss too much on one side of your mouth. It has really and truly bent your nose awry. Do let the other side have some of Jehan's attention.'

"No more was said. But that Johnny and Colombier plotted a deep revenge is evident, for the book appears in Paris with the name of Colombier instead of Bernhardt as author, and among its numerous ridiculous lies about Americans are some spiteful little flings at Sarah. Thus Sudden Johnny gets even."

Mme. Patti, too, had a young man with her—Michael Mortier, brother of the editor of the Paris Figaro—who was to write a book for her, but in St. Louis he spoke too freely to a newspaper reporter about Mme. Patti's relations to Nicolini, and Mortier's life was thereafter made so miserable that he was glad soon to make a bee line for Paris, where it is to be hoped he is at present.

A London correspondent tells us how a favorite actress of that place faced three husbands, and as it is in order to continue turning the crank of the scandal machine while foreign talent is the material to be ground, I will give the paragraph. He says: "The true glory of the Lyceum Theatre is that English Bernhardt, Miss Ellen Terry. This blue-eyed, blonde-locked, Saxon siren is not a radiant beauty as was the ill-fated Adelaide Neilson, but she is something better—she is a charmeuse, as the French call any one possessing that peculiar feminine—which she exercises so powerfully—magnetism. She is the most gifted, and withal the most naturally graceful, woman that I have ever seen. The little movements and artistic attitudes of Sarah Bernhardt would seem forced and artificial beside that unborn charm and harmony of gesture, unstudied and perfect as the ripple of tall grasses or the swaying of the branches of a weeping willow beneath a summer breeze. She is pure womanly, every inch of her. She cannot be awkward even when she tries; and I saw her try the other night in 'The Belle's Stratagem;' but instead of transforming Letitia Handy into a country hoyden in accordance with the text, she only succeeded in assuming a pretty espieglerie that, had I been Doricourt, would have driven me to catch her straightway in my arms and kiss her, declaring that she was charming anyhow. Off the stage I am told that she is quite as fascinating as when before the foot-lights. She has proved the extent of her power of enchantment by successfully winning and wedding three husbands, all of whom are still living, divorce and not death having released her from two of them. In fact, it is reported that while walking in the Grosvenor Gallery recently, with her present spouse, Mr. Kelly, she came face to face with her two former husbands, who were promenading there together, and that the only embarrassed personage of the quartette was Mr. Kelly; and they do say that the law will soon be called into requisition to break the bonds that unite her to her present spouse, and that she will then become the wife of a prominent English actor. Truly this wonderful and interesting lady ought to inscribe on her wedding-ring the motto said to have been adopted by the old Countess of Desmond on the occasion of her fourth marriage:—

If I survive
I'll have five.

Jealousy is at the bottom of nearly every scandal connected with the stage, or with people who have been on the stage. The story of Lizzie McCall's crime is a peculiarly sad one. She had been a favorite burlesque actress, and was playing young heroines with Boucicault in 1880 when she met and married George Barry Wall, a young man of twenty-five years, she being twenty-three. She promised him to leave the stage forever, and in order that she might not be placed in the way of temptation Wall made his home in New Utrecht, Long Island, removing thence to New York. Jealousy early made its appearance in their home, and their married life was not happy or peaceful. They lived together for eighteen months, however, until one fine morning after a violent quarrel she snatched up a pistol and shot her husband through the throat.

THE M'CALL TRAGEDY.

A Russian theatre not long since was the scene of a real drama which deserves a place among the serious accidents of the stage. The two leading actresses were Frenchwomen who had come to St. Petersburg together as friends. They had occupied the same house, and lived on terms of the warmest intimacy for some time. Then a young swell, who had enrolled himself among the admirers of one of them, began to pay court to the other. The consequence was a jealousy which finally led to a separation of the whilom friends. They remained members of the same company, however, and their jealousies found vent about the theatre. One night after a dinner washed down with much champagne, the jilted actress became very violent, and attempted to assault her rival in her dressing-room. She was prevented, and went off threatening vengeance. The course of the piece brought them together in an impassioned scene, in the conclusion of which the one had to warn the other off with a dagger. Heated with wine, her jealousy inflamed by the presence of her faithless lover in a stage box, the jilted artiste lost control of herself, and instead of a warning, dealt her rival a stab. The wounded woman fell bleeding to the stage. Fortunately she was not fatally hurt, and her assailant escaped with an authoritative order to leave Russia, and stay away.

Miss Bertha Welby, who is a popular and talented actress, was a member of the "Only a Farmer's Daughter" company, of which Miss Lilian Cleves was the star. The two ladies could not get along together. Miss Welby insisted that Miss Cleves was jealous of her rival's success; and so it went on, until at last a low ruffian visited Miss Welby in her dressing-room one night, after the performance, and demanded money from her for having applauded her in several towns. She was afraid of the fellow, she said, and so paid him the sum he asked—$15. She then told him to go, and he went; but Miss Cleves, it appears, had assembled the members of the company at the door of the dressing-room to witness the payment of the man, who, as she declared, had led the claque that was making Miss Welby a greater actress than the star. Miss Welby asserted that the whole thing was a piece of blackmail, and that Miss Cleves had instigated it.

BLACKMAILING AN ACTRESS.

Operatic stars are violent sometimes in these exhibitions of jealousy. It will be remembered that at the last Cincinnati music festival, Gerster absolutely refused to sing if Miss Cary preceded her, and the Hungarian prima donna was induced to appear only by the graceful withdrawal of the fair American songstress. Miss Kellogg and Mlle. Roze had a bitter war in St. Louis in 1879, on account of their dressing-rooms, the American prima donna insisting on having the best the Grand Opera House afforded. She got it at last, and was shocked when she heard a story to the effect that Wakefield, then one of the proprietors, had a peep-hole above the dressing-room which he not only made use of himself but invited his friends to use.

The jealousy of Mrs. McKee Rankin (Kitty Blanchard) has more than once been made the subject of newspaper articles. She thought her robust husband went through the love scene with the Widow (Miss Eva Randolph) in the play with too lavish a display of affection, and the green-eyed monster took possession of her. She stood in the wings every night and watched the scene, and the more she watched it the madder she got until at last she demanded from her husband that Miss Randolph be dismissed. This Mr. Rankin sternly refused to do. Then Mrs. Rankin refused to play, and a clever young lady was given the part of Billy Piper. The newspapers praised the new Billy so highly that Mrs. Rankin hurried back to resume the part, but remained cold toward and entirely estranged from her husband. After some time the wound was healed and the couple reunited. There were several split-ups of this kind, but Mr. and Mrs. Rankin are now living happily together, and it is to be hoped that the success of their new play, "49," will keep them happy forever.

JEALOUSY.

Now and then the jealous actress's feelings are expressed in a rather ridiculous manner. During the run of a spectacular play in one of the large cities one of those old chaps who like to linger behind the scenes and tickle the fairies under the chin succeeded in making himself the admirer of one of the ladies—one who played a prince or something of that kind. He brought her flowers every night, took her to supper after the play, and often paid for a ride under the starry night at a time when he should have been resting his hoary head upon his pillow at home. He kept this up for a while; then he suddenly turned his attention to another girl, who was doing a skipping-rope dance during an interval in the play. He began to bring her flowers and to feed her on midnight oysters, and to take her on moonlight rides. The pretty prince stood it as long as she could; then she made up her mind to be revenged on the old deceiver. She waited one night until she saw him talking to the skipping-rope dancer, when she picked up a broom, and stealing to the opposite side of the scene, made a high hit at his plug hat, just as he was presenting the rival a bouquet, and knocked the piece of head-gear clear into the outfield. The ancient Lothario felt around among the few hairs on the top of his head to see whether a piece of skull had not been chipped off; the skipping-rope dancer laughed; the pretty prince hauled off and was about to bat the bouquet to second base when the dancer danced, and what remained to do was to advise the "old gray" to go, which he did rapidly after regaining possession of his battered hat. He was advised that if he returned any more the broom would be used upon himself instead of his hat; and the scenes that he had haunted so long knew him no more after that night.

EDWARD KENDALL.

A New York wife wondered for a long time where her husband went at night. At least she learned that he haunted a down-town theatre. She knew her husband was very fond of the drama, but was astonished when she found out that he was patronizing the play without taking her along, so she dressed up one evening and going up to the box-office, asked the young man whose smiling face shone through the window, if Mr. So-and-So was there? Now she had gone to the right source for her information. Mr. So-and-So had taken away the affections of one of the actresses from the man in the box-office; therefore the man in the box-office manfully replied that Mr. So-and-So was back in Miss Whatdyecaller's dressing-room. Would the man in the box-office be kind enough to show Mr. So-and-So's wife where the dressing-room was? He would, most gladly. Calling his assistant to the window the treasurer took the lady in through the stage entrance and pointed out the dressing-room. Sure enough there was Mr. So-and-So in very close relation and very close conversation with Miss Whatdyecaller, who being a ballet girl, in the act of getting herself into her gauze and spangles, had little else on than her tights. The husband was astounded; the wife was boiling over with rage; the dancer did not know what to make of it. The husband said that there was blood in his spouse's eye and fled the scene. Mrs. So-and-So then turned her attention to the lady in summer costume, and there was a war of words that ended in the actress snapping her fingers in the wife's face, while the latter, unable to do or say anything in her rage, strutted out after her faithless lord and master, who was afraid to return home for three days, and did not return until he saw a "personal" in the Herald saying that all would be forgiven and no questions asked.

OUT IN THE COLD.

The meanest trick, I think, that was ever prompted by jealousy was one in which a well-known comedian and a handsome juvenile lady were made the victims. Having determined to go to a fancy dress ball, they borrowed a Mephistopheles and Venus costume, and having dressed at the theatre in which they were playing, took their clothes to their boarding-house, the comedian retaining only his ulster and the young lady only her silk fur-lined cloak. In the same house the leading lady roomed, and as the comedian had been somewhat attentive to her she grew jealous when she saw him escorting the other flame to the ball, and that both might be taught a lesson she resolved upon a plan of action which she faithfully carried out. The comedian and his companion had plenty of fun at the ball. They returned to their boarding-house about three A. M. Both had latch-keys, but they wouldn't work. Somebody had fastened down the bolt. What were they to do? It was a cold morning with snow on the ground and snow still falling. Their carriage had gone; they didn't wish to go to a hotel in masquerade style, so they resolved to stick it out until the door would be opened. And they did so. The comedian wrapped his ulster around him and sat down on the doorstep; the young lady gathered her cloak around her as tightly as she could and stood up in a corner of the entrance, shivering and wondering what the people thought who passed by and looked at them. They remained there three hours, and when the door was opened, it was the leading lady who did the opening. She laughed as if she would lose her life in the effort when she saw the plight the two were in, and said as they passed up the hall that she was sorry she had put down that bolt when she came home, but she thought they were both in the house.

The story of an actor's jealousy is nicely told by a New York paper in the following: A handsome young actress attached regularly to one of the New York theatres has a husband and a baby, a sickly little thing, and the husband is outrageously jealous, all the more that this season he has done "job work," which has kept him "on the road" pretty constantly. Lately he "came in," the "combination" with which he was connected having "gone up." He arrived unexpectedly late one afternoon, and found his wife out. On the table lay a note addressed to her in a masculine hand. It was open and ran thus:—

"Dear Friend: I do not think you have any cause to be anxious about the baby. It is only cutting its teeth a little hard—that's all. However, as you desire it, and say it would relieve your mind while you are away at the theatre, I will come to-night about nine and stay all night with you. Don't speak of the trouble. I shall only be too glad to let you get a little sleep after being up so much with baby.

Your true friend,
K. S. Stanton, M. D."

The husband was furious at this note, seemingly so harmless. He thrust it into his pocket, and without waiting to see his wife strode from the house. He had now, he thought, what he had long suspected, proof of his wife's infidelity. Why, it was shamless! Dr. Stanton would pass the night, would he, and blame it on the baby! but he should find that there was a husband around ready to deal terrible vengeance upon the betrayer. His feelings were not pleasant ones, as he lay perdue the rest of the day, nursing his wrath, to keep it warm. When the pretty young actress came home she was told that a gentleman had called and gone away in a great hurry, leaving no name. At about half-past ten that evening, while she was at the theatre, the door of her bed-room was dragged open furiously, and the enraged husband rushed in. He looked around under the bed and into the closets, but found no man.

There were, however, two persons in the room. One an infant slumbering peacefully in the crib, the other a lady sitting at a small table on which lay several little bits of white paper into which she was pouring some globules from a tiny bottle. Her eyes were blue, her complexion a pure pink and white, and her hair, curling in loose ringlets over her well-formed head, was just touched with gray. She looked up astonished and said:—

"Don't make such a noise; you'll wake the child. Are you a burglar or what do you want?"

The husband paused in his fruitless search and replied: "I want that man."

"What man?"

"The man that's made an appointment with my wife for to-night."

"Who is your wife and what business have you in Miss ——'s bed-room?" asked the lady.

"Miss ——'s my wife."

"Indeed; well, you can't make me believe that she ever made any appointment with any man she oughtn't to make."

"I can't, can't I? read that then," he said, throwing the letter on the table and scattering the medicine. The lady read the letter and began to laugh, which enraged the husband still more.

"Where have you hidden this Dr. Stanton? I will blow his brains out," he cried.

"No, you won't."

"You see if I don't."

"Well, blow then: I am Dr. Stanton, the author of that letter," said the lady.

She had to sign her name, Kate S. Stanton, and show him that the writing was the same as in the note, before he would be convinced, and then he was the most sheepish-looking man in New York. The story got out, and he was the butt of every actor in the city. They refused to believe that he "walked home." They condoled with him on account of his ill health, which forced him to stop acting. They recommended him to consult a doctor, especially a lady doctor, Kate Stanton, for example. Altogether he was so "roasted" that he will have to have more than a mere letter in future to make him thirst for vengeance.

"Hang these women doctors!" is all you can get him to say; "if they must be doctors, why can't they sign their full name, and not make trouble between man and wife?"

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CHAPTER XXXV.
JOHN WILKES BOOTH, PRESIDENT LINCOLN'S ASSASSIN.

An interview with an old stager was published a few months ago in the New York Dramatic News, which furnishes some new ideas about John Wilkes Booth, brother of the illustrious Edwin, and the terrible crime with which he shook a nation to its centre. John Wilkes Booth, it will be remembered, was the man who shot and killed President Lincoln, while the latter was witnessing a performance of "Our American Cousin," at Ford's Theatre, Washington, D. C., on the night of April 14, 1865. Laura Keene was on the stage at the time. Wilkes Booth entered the President's box and shot him in the back of the head. He then made his escape by leaping from the box to the stage, and running thence through the stage entrance to the street, where he leaped on a horse in waiting for him. As he sprang from the box, his foot caught in the American flag which was draped around the railing, and he fell, spraining his ankle. Landing on the stage, he jumped up, and waving a dagger over his head, he shouted, "Sic semper tyrannis." He was subsequently shot by Sergeant Corbett, while attempting to escape from a barn in which he had sought refuge.

JOHN WILKES BOOTH.

Said a veteran actor, referring back a score of years, to Wilkes Booth's opening at Wallack's old theatre, on Broadway, near Broome Street: "The piece to open in was 'Richard III.' Monday morning came for rehearsal with the star, and the company had all assembled awaiting him. Many were the stories told of his wonderful gifts and eccentricities. One old member of the company, who had played with him through Georgia, prophesied he would make a terrific hit. Said he: 'I am an old man at the business and have seen and played with some of the greatest tragedians the world has ever seen. I've played second to Macready. I've divided the applause with Charles Kean. I've acted often with Forrest, but in all my long years of professional experience this young man Wilkes Booth (I might call him a boy), this boy is the first actor that ever (to use a professional term) knocked me off my pins, upset and completely left me without a word to say! Yes, sir, an old actor like me that you would suppose an earthquake could not move, was tongue-tied—unable to speak his lines.' 'Perhaps you never knew them,' said our saucy soubrette. The old man smiled, and then glaring at her said: 'Not know Shakespeare?' He turned from her with a contemptuous smile. 'Why, then,' said Jim Collier, 'were you so much at sea if you were so well up in the lines?' 'Wait till you see him yourself, then ask. I tell you, gentlemen, there is more magnetism in Wilkes Booth's eye than in any human being's I ever saw.' I listened to the old actor with pleasure, and set him down as an enthusiast—a not uncommon thing among some veterans of the stage, although, as a rule they are apt to carp at the present and deplore the downfall of the past. 'What do you think?' said Ed. Tilton to me. 'You know the young man's brother, Edwin, and played with the father of the boys. So have I; but don't you think our friend exaggerates a bit?' 'No, I do not,' said I, 'for I know the genius that runs in the blood of the Booth family, and have seen it crop up at times in just such a manner as he describes. The last engagement that the great Junius Brutus Booth played in San Francisco only a few weeks before his death, I was cast for Parson Welldo in a "New Way to Pay Old Debts." And when Sir Giles, hemmed in on all sides, is unable to break the combination against him, sees the parson approaching, the lion immediately becomes a lamb. His look of heavenly sweetness when I told him of the marriage of his daughter was a study; but when he learned she was wedded to his bitterest enemy, only a Dore's pencil could depict the diabolical malignity of the man. The marks of his fingers I carried upon my throat for days after, and when he shrieked in my ear with his hot breath, and the foam dropping from his lip—"tell me, devil, are they married?" I had but to reply "they are," but was unable to do so. So you see I am prepared for anything this wonderful young man may turn out to be.'

"At that moment a commotion was heard at the back of the stage, and Baker's voice was heard to say: 'Oh! not waiting long; you are on time!' And striding down the centre of the stage came the young man himself who was destined to play such an unfortunate part in the history of our country afterwards. The stage being dark at his entrance, the foot and border lights were suddenly turned up and revealed a face and form not easily described or forgotten. You have seen a high-mettled racer with his sleek skin and eye of unusual brilliancy chafing under a restless impatience to be doing something. It is the only living thing I could liken him to. After the usual introductions were over, with a sharp, jerky manner he commenced the rehearsal. I watched him closely and perceived the encomiums passed upon him by the old actor were not in the least exaggerated. Reading entirely new to us, he gave; business never thought of by the oldest stager, he introduced; and, when the rehearsal was over, one and all admitted a great actor was amongst us. Knowing his own powers, he was very particular in telling those around him not to be affrighted at night, as he might (he said, with a smile) throw a little more fire into the part than at rehearsal. Lady Anne (Miss Gray) was gently admonished; Richmond, who was Jim Collier, was bluntly told to look out in the combat scene. Jim, who was (and probably is now) something of an athlete, smiled a sickly smile at the idea of anybody getting the best of him in a combat scene, and in a sotto voice said to Jim Ward, 'Keep your eye on me to-night.'

"The evening arrived, the house was fair only, and his reception was not as warm as his merits deserved. The soliloquy over, then came the scenes with King Henry, and breaking loose from all the old orthodox, tie-wig business of the Richards since the days of Garrick down to Joannes, he gave such a rendition of the crook-back tyrant as was never seen before, and perhaps never will be again. Whether it was in the gentle wooing of the Lady Anne, the hypocrisy of the king, or the malignant joy at Buckingham's capture down to the fight and death of the tyrant, originality was stamped all over and through the performance. It was a terrible picture, but it had a humorous side one night. At the commencement of the combat, when Richard, covered with blood and the dust of the battle-field, crosses swords with Richmond, Collier looked defiant and almost seemed to say: 'Now, Mr. Wilkes Booth, you have been frightening everybody to-night, try it on me?' And at the lines where Richard says, 'A dreadful lay; here's to decide it,' the shower of blows came furious from Richard's sword upon the devoted earl's head. Now was Collier's turn, and bravely did he return them; with renewed strength Richard rained blows upon blows so fast that the athletic Jim began to wince—as much as to say, 'How long is this going to last?' Nothing daunted, Collier with both hands clenched his powerful weapon, but it was only a feather upon Booth's sword. Jim was the first to show evidence of exhaustion, and no wonder, nothing could withstand the trip-hammer blows of that Richard. Watching for his head's protection, he was too unmindful of his heels, and before he was aware of it, the doughty Jim for once was discomfited—beaten; and lay upon his back in the orchestra, where the maddened Booth had driven him.

"The fight over, the curtain descended, but Booth could not rise. Many believed him dead, but no! there was the hard breathing and the glazed, open eye. Could it be possible this was the man who only a few moments before nobody could withstand in his fury; now a limp mass of exhausted nature, his nerves all unstrung, and whom a child might conquer?

"Well, the piece, as may be imagined, was a success—a positive and an unqualified success, so much so that it was kept on the balance of the week. "The Robbers" was called for rehearsal next, and as usual the war (then in progress) was the sole topic of conversation. The company was pretty evenly divided on the question, a majority of them having played throughout the South, and had the same sympathy that the merchant had who saw his trade diverted through other channels. Not a word of politics was ever heard from Booth during the first week of his engagement, although he was an attentive listener to the angry discussions pro and con., till one morning somebody (I forget who) read aloud from a newspaper of the arrest of Marshal George P. Kane in Baltimore, and his incarceration in Fort McHenry by order of Stanton. One of the company (now dead) who shall be nameless, approved heartily of the act, and denounced the entire city of Baltimore as a hot-bed of rebels, and should be razed to the ground. His opponent took an entirely different view of the question, and thought the levelling to the earth should be done to one Edwin Stanton by the aid of a pistol shot. The unfortunate Lincoln's name was never mentioned. At the suggestion of shooting Stanton, a voice, tremulous with emotion, at the back of the stage was heard to exclaim. 'Yes, sir, you are right!' It was Booth's. 'I know George P. Kane well; he is my friend, and the man who could drag him from the bosom of his family for no crime whatever, but a mere suspicion that he may commit one some time, deserves a dog's death!'

"It was not the matter of what he said, it was the manner and general appearance of the speaker, that awed us. It would remind you of Lucifer's defiance at the council. He stood there the embodiment of evil. But it was for a moment only, for in the next breath with his sharp, ringing voice, he exclaimed, 'Go on with the rehearsal!'

"That day and its events passed from memories of the majority of us, but I never could forget the scene; the statuesque figure of the young man uttering those few words in the centre of the old stage of Wallack's can never be forgotten. Some months after I was awakened from a sound sleep and told that President Lincoln had been shot. Half dazed I inquired when, and where, and being told, asked who was the assassin? Wilkes Booth is thought to be, but it is only a supposition that he is the guilty one. I felt it was but too true, for I could see him in my mind's eye as upon that day in the old theatre when he would have undertaken any task, however bold. A few hours after proved the rumor to be true. The last act of the tragedy all are familiar with, and one day standing at the grave outside of Baltimore where all that is mortal of father and son lie, I could not stifle memories of the past, and felt like dropping a tear of pity over the sudden and early downfall of one so promising, that had he lived might now be delighting nightly thousands with his powerful acting."

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CHAPTER XXXVI.
THE SUMMER VACATION.

The close of a theatrical season, which rarely exceeds forty weeks, and which terminates in the month of June, is always hailed by the prosperous actor as an occasion when he can find enjoyment and rest in some cosy spot; or if he is in the ranks, and is ambitious to be reckoned in the constellation of dramatic stars, he looks forward to his summer vacation as a time in which he will have opportunity to fix up his business for the coming season; or if he has not yet secured a manager—probably needing one with money—he can button-hole the financiers of the "Square," as the meeting-place and mart of the theatrical fraternity of the entire continent is termed. The stars are becoming so numerous, and, indeed, so insignificant, that even members of the variety profession with the thinnest pretensions in the world to dramatic distinction, and there are few on the legitimate stage above the ranks of utility, who have not aspirations of the same bright and twinkling kind. The beginning of every season finds a hundred or more new combinations, with little talent and less money, starting out on the road; and one, two, or three weeks brings them back, either "on their baggage," or "on their uppers,"—that is, the railroad company carries them home and holds the baggage for their fares, or they "count the railroad ties," which is a metaphoric way of saying they walk home. Very few of the cheap variety artists of the present day are worthy of even a mean place in the "legit.," as they designate the legitimate stage; and it may be said, too, that some stars who have succeeded in reaching the legitimate boards would scarcely be reckoned bright ornaments among the gems of the variety stage. This, however, is a subject beyond the purposes of this work, and so I will not go further into it.

LA GRAND DUCHESS.

The actor and actress who have settled down to the regular routine of general work are among the persons who get most enjoyment for their money during their summer vacation. Stars, male and female alike, who have made money and reached a satisfactory round on the ladder of fame, though they may not have cottages by the seaside, or summer residences of anything like a pretentious character, can also be counted among the number who "loaf and invite their souls" in a profitable and pleasurable manner. Most of the male stars have nice little nooks by river, lake, or seaside, in quiet, cool, and shady spots, while the tragediennes and comediennes of prominence and fortune seem to prefer either handsome residences in New York or other Eastern metropolis, or else a watering-place cottage. Maggie Mitchell prefers Long Branch. So does Mary Anderson, who lives a very secluded life at this gay resort. Most of her time is passed in playing with her little step-sister on the lawn of their pretty place. She rides on horseback a great deal, and takes an occasional short cruise on her new yacht, "The Galatea," which she has named after the latest role added to her repertoire. Minnie Palmer, about the only real rival Lotta has got, summers at Long Branch. Emma Abbott goes to Cape Ann. Lester Wallack devotes himself and his vacation to making short trips in his steam yacht. John McCullough hasn't settled down anywhere yet. Last year he went to England to work and win a London reputation; this year he is with Gen. Sheridan in the Yellowstone Valley. Fred. Marsden likes to go fishing at Salmon Lake. McKee Rankin has a stock farm at Bois Blanc, Canada, where he spends his summers. John W. Norton flies away to Coney Island, Long Branch, and a round of the Eastern watering-places, Mrs. Norton always accompanying him. And so the category might be lengthened out. But it is useless. Established stars have established fortunes as well as reputations only by dint of the hardest, and, I might add, in many cases, least appreciated kind of work, and they deserve the thousands of dollars they make every year. Few of the great stars fall less than $50,000 for a forty weeks' season, and there are few whose share goes under $1,000 a week. Joe Emmet accumulates money faster, probably, than any other man who plays to the same prices, and John McCullough and Mary Anderson are among the reapers of the richest harvests. Booth seldom plays a season through, but when he does he, of course, carries off the honors.

JOHN W. NORTON.

Actors and actresses, while generous as a class, save their money, and very few are found loitering around New York "broke," during the vacation months. Still there are cases of poverty. I have known a former popular Irish comedian, who belongs to a family of popular and prosperous members of the profession, to walk the streets of a Western town many a day without a cent in his pockets and nothing to look up to at night for shelter but the stars high and pitiless over his bald head. Everybody has read about the English actor, who, driven to distress, and standing at the door of starvation, donned an old gray wig, and was found singing and begging around Union Square. It was only when a policeman in arresting him accidentally pulled off his wig that the actor's identity and condition were known. The former was carefully concealed and the latter cheerfully and liberally relieved. I was at a banquet given by the press of St. Louis to Thomas W. Keene, the tragedian, during his first starring season, when among the few guests who sat down to the table, between Billy Crane and Stuart Robson, was a short, stout, gray-headed, and long gray-bearded man, whom nobody knew. The night was bitterly cold, still the old fellow wore only a long, gray linen duster over a thin, red woollen shirt, with a very queer pair of pantaloons and rough brogans. His high, battered and wide-brimmed hat rested under his chair as if he was afraid some of the company would steal it. He swept clean every dish set before him, emptied every glass of wine, and with bent head, and knife and fork in hand, was waiting anxiously for each course when it came. As soon as he was noticed the question passed around, "Who is the old gray?" and fun was poked at him ruthlessly; but it rebounded lightly from the folds of his linen duster, and he heeded not the blows. When the toasts went around the old man was asked to respond to one, and got up and spoke charmingly for half an hour or more, introducing the Marseillaise, both as a martial hymn, and as a song and dance. Then he explained how the city editor of a local paper had sent him to report the banquet; how he came shivering to the marrow of his bones to the door of the Club House—the most fashionable in the city—and asked permission to go into the kitchen to warm himself previous to appearing at the banquet board, a permission which was granted. The old man spoke so eloquently in telling a pitiful story of his poverty, Pat Short, treasurer of the Olympic, at the instigation, I think, of Manager Norton of the Grand Opera House, picked up a hat and took up a collection from the ten newspaper men and ten actors present. The collection netted $39.75, which was poured in the old man's two hands, while his eyes were wet with tears. Then he was freely plied with wine, and danced, sang, and gave phrenological examinations for two hours, when the crowd dispersed in the greatest good humor. Stuart Robson told this story to a Boston Times man who made a two-column article out of it that travelled all over the country, and in which all the credit of the charity with the figures greatly increased was appropriated unjustly, by Messrs. Robson & Crane. But this is not what I started out about.

MARY ANDERSON.

"While the actor seeks deep shadows under the far-reaching arms of huge trees," writes the New York Dramatic Times man, "or leisurely smokes his pipe beneath heavy boughs, thick with scented buds and blossoms, some one is working out his programme for the next season. This 'some one' is often confounded with the actor himself, or is taken for the parasite who fosters and thrives on some indirect vein of the living and active theatrical body. The sturdy man of business, who by chance happens to pass the pavement between Broadway and Fifth Avenue, on the south side of Union Square, fancies that the crowd of well-dressed and, as a rule, quiet men, are idle professionals, lounging away a warm day between gossip and beer. He little knows that this is the theatrical exchange of the Western World, where business is carried on in the same honorable mode as at the Stock Exchange, without the Bedlam noises, and that the seeming drifters under the grateful shade of the Morton House are as shrewd in looking at the run of the theatrical market as any Wall Street broker. Every theatre or nomadic attraction throughout the United States has, at some time during the day, a 'some one' looking out for 'dates' and 'booking' memoranda for future contracts. Without any agreement to meet or transact business, the 'some one' appears with the June roses and makes it a point to pass the Rialto between the hours of ten A. M. and four P. M. The affairs of this exchange are gigantic (when for instance one manager gives bona fide evidence that he has cleared $40,000 in the past season), and though it would be impossible to make an estimate of the total amount, it is safe to say that millions are the result of these seemingly casual meetings.

"A guide published last year gives a total of about four thousand five hundred theatres, that kept open their doors for an average of forty weeks. Taking the poor attraction, with the star that fills the theatre to overflowing, the average receipts would be about $150 for each theatre, or $675,000 paid every night for amusements throughout the United States. This would make a total for one week, of $4,050,000, or, for the entire season of forty weeks, $162,000,000, not counting matinees. Taking, then, an industry that brings in over $160,000,000 in round numbers during the season, the neatly dressed men that are said to 'hang around the Square' are the men that control or pull the wires and set the machinery in motion. The figures above are, after all, but approximate, and neither include matinees, which in themselves would count one million, nor does it include the circus world, which is not represented on the Rialto.

"On the other side of the ledger will be found twenty-eight thousand actors drawing their salaries from these receipts; and about twelve thousand more, consisting of carpenters, property-men, scene-shifters, the employees of the front of the theatre, etc. Twenty dollars a week each would make a fair average for the entire forty thousand, and would aggregate a total of $32,000,000 in salaries alone. Add to this the rent of the four thousand five hundred different theatres and halls which, at a moderate calculation of say $4,000 each, would make $18,000,000 for the year.

"The season having closed, actors seek secluded spots, revel in the enjoyment of flannel shirts and country life, enjoying a dolce far niente either by seashore or in wooded glens, and are described as 'resting.' In the nooks many have charming households, and under their roof-trees happiness reigns, without much reference to 'shop.' The manager or agent, however, as soon as one season ends, procures his 'booking' book and starts for the Square. His plan may be to play his attraction in the South. The end of his route will then likely be New Orleans. After having his date in that city, he will 'fill up' his time going and coming back. If the attraction be good, he fills his time by playing in larger cities for one week; if not, he makes one or two-night stands, which, interpreted, means that his company plays for one or two nights in a city. Starting in September, he works his way down by Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, and then in the beaten route through Richmond, Memphis, Atlanta, etc. This route fixing shows the experienced manager; for should he, for instance, have the week commencing February 1st in New Orleans, he would have a night in Mobile, Alabama, before reaching there. To a new man the Mobile manager might offer Saturday, giving the company time to reach New Orleans on Monday. If this be accepted, it would show inexperience in the route maker, as the fashionable night at Mobile is Friday, Saturday being 'niggers'' night. He should so time it as to reach Mobile on Friday, play that night to big business, have his matinee, and do the best he could with Saturday night. In other sections of the country he must know when the workman's pay-day is. In the oil and mining regions, for instance, the men are paid but every fortnight. The attraction which reaches there soonest after the pay-day fares the best.

"Another of the grave considerations is the question of railroad fares. All but the big attractions must take into serious consideration the general increase of railroad rates to the profession. Some of the roads have not joined in the pool, and still cater to theatrical custom. The cities on these routes are likely to have a rush of attractions this season, and, as a consequence, will before long yield poor receipts. At any rate there is a tendency, even among the best-paying companies, to take short 'jumps' this season (1882–3) and visit cities that would have been passed over with contempt a short time since. But the difference of travelling expenses one or three hundred dollars in a day, with a company of forty people, dragging extra baggage, means a big difference in profits.

"The man on the Square has to look out for all these things, as well as the printing of the company, one of the most important and expensive items of a travelling company, an item which will often make him pass wakeful days and sleepless nights. These contracts, of course, vary for the different organizations. The big theatrical gun as well as the smallest, either personally or through agents, keeps himself posted of the affairs of the Rialto. No matter as to how heavy calibre the big gun may be, he may tell his friend he don't visit the Square, but he does, or is sure to let it be known that he lives at the Union Square Hotel, or at some other hotel near by, where his booking is done. Managers of provincial theatres, eager to fill the time for their houses, travel eastward to the Mecca of theatredom, or have their booking done by local agents or firms engaged in this city in that specialty—the commission for an attraction being from $5 to $7. One firm of this kind in Union Square do the booking for more than fifty theatres, while another and larger one in Twenty-third Street controls entire circuits, and furnishes attractions for several hundred theatres. The manager having laid the foundation of his plan, takes the summer to complete it, changing a town here, or a date there, to make his route as complete as possible, and as convenient to travel over, so as to reach a town and have his company rest before appearing.

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CHAPTER XXXVII.
FUN AMONG THE ELKS.

The benevolent and protective order of Elks is a mystic organization whose membership is made up almost entirely of theatrical people, newspaper men, and people who have some claim or other on the dramatic profession. It is a noble institution, having for its foundation those grand and beautiful principles—friendship, charity, and justice. Every prominent actor in the country is found on its rolls, and the good work it accomplishes from one year to another is extensive, and worthy the widest recognition. The only thing I have to find fault with is its initiation business. Being a jolly, fun-loving set, every candidate is put through in the liveliest kind of style. I had a friend, a low comedian named Jughandle, who got me to be an Elk, and I think they put up an unusually interesting bill for my initiation. In fact, I don't think it was a genuine Elk initiation at all, but it was awful funny for those who witnessed, and not a bit pleasant for me.

It was Sunday afternoon when I was introduced to the mysteries of this Order. The first person I met in the ante-chamber of the lodge room was an officer called the Outer Spyglass. He ordered two strange Elks to lead me away to another room where I was blindfolded, and a long gown was thrown over me. A large red box, coffin-shaped, with hinges in the middle of the back, and a round hole in the middle of the split lid, so that by opening the box, adjusting a man's neck to the place intended for it, and then closing the box again, the contrivance became the ghastliest sort of a pillory. There were arm openings in the sides of the coffin and the lower portion which had been sawed short was not boarded up, so that the legs might be as free as possible under the circumstances, in walking. Into a wooden overcoat of this kind I was hurriedly thrust, with my head protruding through the hole in the lid. The garment had been built for a man with a longer and thinner neck than mine, and its proportions were so entirely out of keeping with my physique, that while I was choking, and my spinal column threatened to crack any minute, my arms and legs were suffering the severest torture. It was certainly a comfort to know that dead people do not as a general thing wear their ligneous ulsters in this style. When I had the overcoat on, the attendants tied a piece of rope around my neck, a three-pound prayer-book was placed in my right hand, and a euchre deck of cards in my left. Being ready for the sacrifice, one of the Elks was delegated to introduce me to the Order. He took hold of the rope that hung from my neck and hauled me up to the door at which the Grand Microscope stands guard.

"The candidate is ready," said the outer Spy-Glass.

"Let him enter!" was the Microscope's command.

Trembling and helpless, I stood at last, a picture of the utmost ridiculousness and misery, in the presence of the High, Mighty and Magnificent Muck-a-Muck of the Order.

"Quivering candidate!" the Muck-a-Muck exclaimed. "The Elks give you greeting. Every person here assembled stretches out his right hand to you, and the champion Indian-Club Swinger will now give you, in one solid chunk, the congratulations of this entire gathering for the success that promises to attend your attempt to enter our Order. Club-Swinger, congratulate!"

A CANDIDATE IN REGALIA.

The Club-Swinger did so. It was the most startling congratulation I was ever the recipient of. If a train of cars travelling at the rate of 100 miles an hour had run into me I could not have been more surprised. A blow that would have made a pile driver or a quartz hammer feel that it had no more force than the hind leg of a house-fly was planted on the coffin lid right over the first button of my vest, and for three minutes I sped through space. When I landed on my back I felt as if I had run against another such blow speeding in an opposite direction to the first. Every bone in my body was jarred to my finger tips and toe-nails, and the wrench my neck got in the sudden stoppage gave me the impression that my spine had been all at once lengthened out sixteen feet and was still growing.

"Potential Pill-Prescriber!" the High Muck-a-Muck commanded, "examine the candidate's condition and immediately report upon the same! How has he stood the congratulation?"

The Master Physician felt my pulse, muttered to himself "14,—48,—96,—135," and answered "He has stood it well, your Majesty."

"Then let him thrice make the circuit of the Peculiar Circle!" was the next command.

Several Elks helped me to my feet, and after gathering up the scattered euchre deck and restoring it and the prayer-book to my outstretched hands, the first attendant seized the rope still dangling from my neck, and led me on a rapid trot around the lodge room. Wherever I passed heavy blows were rained upon my coffin covering, and I imagined I heard several half-suppressed laughs among my tormentors. I was beginning to get mad and had about made up my mind to throw off the wooden yoke I was carrying around, tear the bandage from my eyes, and sail in and punch the heads of half-a-dozen Elks, when I was pounced upon, dragged to the floor and roughly relieved of the coffin. I felt better after this and calmly awaited the next move.

"Bring the candidate before the throne," was the next command of the High Muck-a-Muck.

With the assistance of a few Elks I succeeded in reaching a spot where we stopped, and which, I suppose, was right in the midst of the radiance that hovers nearest the presiding officer's throne. It is needless to say that I felt very badly, and I must have looked frightful, especially when, as happened just then, somebody clapped a demolished stove-pipe hat on my head to add to my already ridiculous aspect. I had hopes, however, that the end was near; but I was sadly mistaken.

"Now, trembling neophyte," said the High Muck-a-Muck, in very impressive tones, "the most important part of our ceremony still remains. Hitherto you have had all the fun; from this time on the fun will be on the side of the assembled Elks. Let the Grand Microscope search the candidate. See that he has no life-preserver under his vest, or pre-Raphælite panel of sole leather concealed in that portion of his pantaloons to which the hind straps of his suspenders are fastened."

"He is entirely defenceless, your Majesty," reported the Grand Microscope, after having made the necessary examination.

"Then let him learn the three motions through which every Prophet passes before attaining to the grand secrets of our Order. Let him test the swiftness of the Descent, the roughness of the Path of Progress, and the suddenness of the Upward flight to glory, and the possession of the everlasting talisman. When this has been done, if the candidate still lives, prepare, my mystic brethren, to welcome him into your circle."

My attendants now dealt with me very kindly. I hardly knew what to think of the easy, almost respectful, manner in which they took me by the arm as we walked along. Not a word was said. Silence intense as that which wields a spell over an audience while some daring act is in progress on the flying trapeze, seemed to surround me. As we walked I felt that there was the slightest bit of a rise—a gradual going upward—to my path. I paid little attention to this, however, because I was receiving unusually kind treatment at the time. I had just made up my mind that I had passed all the perilous places along the road, and was about to mutter to myself a mixture of thanks and self-gratulations for the security and comparative blissfulness of my condition, when, with surprising suddenness, my attendants caught me by the arms and legs, gave me a gentle waft forward, and then, reversing the motion, clapped me upon a rough plank at a very steep incline, down which I shot like lightning, regardless of the splinters that ran up into the tenderest portions of my pantaloons, and occasionally went on short and sharp expeditions into the neighborhood of my backbone. Down! Down!! Down!!! I slid, until I thought I had started from the top end of Jacob's ladder, away up beyond the furtherest space through which the tiniest stars twinkle, and was on a rapid and important journey to the centre of the earth. I kept on thinking this way until, for a moment, there was a cessation of the splinter annoyance upon that portion of my anatomy on which I usually do my sleighing. I felt myself falling, and then I felt myself stop. The force of gravitation was never before so fully and satisfactorily impressed upon me. I got so heavy when I had no further to go that I nearly crushed my life out with my own weight, and the sitting down was done with such alacrity that a pile-driver couldn't have sent the splinters that clung to my pantaloons further into my flesh. Add to this that the first thing I struck was not a spring mattress, or a high hair cushion, but a wheel-barrow, filled with small wooden cones, with sharp edges and cruel points. The shock caused me to send up such a howl that I imagined I could see the hair of every Elk in the land standing on end. A well-defined laugh answered the howl, and before I could think of the front end of the prayers for the dead, I heard the High Muck-a-Muck's voice ring out:—

"Wing him away," he commanded, "on Eincycle, the one-wheeled horse of the Hereafter."

MUCK-A-MUCK.

They wung me away at once. I discovered that the one-wheeled horse designated by the High Muck-a-Muck when he made use of the half German and half Latin word in his command was a very modern wheel-barrow. The road over which the winging was done was, to say the least, an unpleasant one. There was an obstruction of some kind every six inches—hills and hollows without number—and, even if I had not already been physically shattered by the exciting episodes of the first part of the initiation, the merciless jolting I got and the sharp-pointed cones I kept dancing up and down on were sufficient torture to make me long for some quiet, peaceful spot on which I might stretch out my wearied limbs and close my eyes forever. I don't know how far I was carried over this rough road, which terminated in a tank of chilly water, into which I was unceremoniously dumped, while a shout went up from the assembled brotherhood that indicated that they were highly delighted over my prospects of being drowned. After sinking three times without any apparent effort having been made to rescue me, I evinced a disposition to remain under water. I was beginning to fill up rapidly, and celestial visions were already flitting before me, when something sharp ran through my shoulder and I felt myself lifted to the water's surface.

"See that he remains blindfolded," shouted the High Muck-a-Muck, and, while I still dangled from an iron hook on the end of a stout pole, the dripping handkerchief was tightened across my eyes.

"Put him through the Purgation rite," was the next order, in accordance with which I was thrown, face forward, upon a barrel, and one Elk taking me by the heels while another held my head, I was rolled and rolled until I had passed through one of the most violent spells of sea-sickness anybody ever experienced.

"Will the candidate recover?" asked the High Muck-a-Muck.

"I have some hopes, your Majesty," answered the Potential Pill-Prescriber.

"Then bring in the Krupp gun," the Muck-a-Muck commanded, "and while he still has life, let the candidate climb the cloud-heights around which many a Prophet has soared."

I was trembling with cold up to the time the High Muck-a-Muck mentioned the Krupp gun; just then a chill of fear ran down my back and my knees knocked together so violently that I could hear the bones rattle. The great cannon was rolled in and placed in position near where I stood.

"Spread the merciful net three hundred yards away," ordered the High Muck-a-Muck, "and sprinkle the carpet in its centre with fourteen papers of tacks. Place the sheet-iron bumper ten yards beyond, to prevent the candidate from being shot out of bounds. Charge the cannon with thirty pounds of powder; load her up and let her fly!"

They poured the thirty pounds of powder into the huge mouth of the cannon, rammed down an iron or steel plate, and then to my horror, grabbed me and pushed me into the piece of ordnance until my feet rested on the metallic plate and my head barely protruded from the top of the war-engine. Buckets of chopped ice were poured in to fill up the vacant space, and before the congealed wadding was all in, my toes and fingers were completely frost-bitten. When everything seemed to be in readiness the High Muck-a-Muck said:—

"The candidate has no hat on. Fish his plug out of the lake, put an air-cushion inside and then decorate his head with it."

The "air-cushion" referred to was only a blown bladder. It was placed in the top of my bruised and battered wet hat, which was tightly and gracefully placed upon my head.

"Is he ready?" shouted the High Muck-a-Muck.

"He is," was the Grand Microscope's answer.

"Then, let her go!"

Fiz! boom!! bang!!! I knew the match was at the fuse; felt the whole business give way; heard the scream of the powder leaving the cannon at the same moment as myself; saw the flash of fire as it burned my eyebrows, moustache and the ends of my hair; had my breath swept away by the swiftness of my flight, and while all these experiences were mingled in one instantaneous jumble in my mind, whack went my head against the sheet-iron bumper; bang! went the explosive bladder in my hat, and, hurled back by the recoil, I fell right in the middle of the carpet space in the merciful net, just back in the midst of the fourteen papers of tacks that had been sprinkled there for my benefit. I howled and jumped into the air, but every time I jumped I fell back again and got a fresh invoice of tacks in my flesh. Although there seemed to be nothing particularly mirth-provoking in my situation, the assembled Elks laughed heartily until I was stuck as full of carpet tacks as a boiled ham is of cloves at a pastry-cook's ball. Then they took me out of the net, picked the tacks out of my back, and stood me up, weak and exhausted, according to instructions, in front of the throne.

"The candidate," said the High Muck-a-Muck, "has given satisfactory evidence of his fortitude and endurance, and we are now prepared to receive him forever into our number as an Elk. Let him take the oath and kiss the branching antlers."

The oath was administered and I saluted the antlers with my lips as fervently as I could under the circumstances.

"Now remove the blindfold."

The handkerchief was removed from my eyes and I saw—nothing. But I was an Elk.

I have seen many candidates initiated into this Order since that time, but I have never seen any such proceeding as that here described, which leads me to infer that some friends, and among them Jughandle, put up a job on me and used me a little roughly, for the sake of the sport it afforded them.

THE CIRCUS WORLD.

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CHAPTER XXXVIII.
THE CIRCUS IS HERE.

A "disengaged canvasman" who was probably driven to poetry for lack of other work wrote the following spring verses which were published in the New York Clipper:—

In the spring the gorgeous banners float upon the circus tent,
And the active agents' fancies on "advances" all are bent.
In the spring the "bounding brothers" try some new and daring games,
While the opposition "fakirs" call each other awful names.

In the spring the "sideshow-blowers," with their never-failing tongues,
Pump out paralyzing language from their copper-fastened lungs.
In the spring the fair Circassian, with her every hair on end,
Leaves again her native Brooklyn, on the road her steps to wend.

In the spring ye "candy-butcher" shows confections old and tough,
While the gentle lemonadist juggles with the same old stuff.
In the spring ye merry jester learns conundrums bright and new
(Dug up by the Christy Minstrels in the year of '52).

In the spring—and in the ring—the riders whirl around in style,
While the air is filled with romance (and rheumatics—I should smile)!
In the spring—oh, well, I'll cheese it, for I haven't got a cent,
And I think I hear the landlord, coming up to ask for rent!

There is more fact than poetry in these lines. The spring brings gaily colored posters, like flowers of many hues, to decorate the dead walls and fences; and litters the streets with small hand-bills in which the wonders of the evening show are dwelt upon in a style of rhetoric that would make George Francis Train sick. The name of the show is too long to print in this book, even if I began at the title-page and wrote small and close through every page down to the lower right-hand corner of the back cover. Since they got to consolidating shows, they have by some elastic process begun to lengthen out the name, and at every reappearance of a circus in a town the bill-poster must add a few yards to the length of his fence to get the improved and newly elongated name on it, and to make a few square yards of additional space for the fresh stock of impossible pictures the artist has chopped out for the show. I like to regard the ridiculous art and the brazen exaggeration of these posters. What consummate impertinence prompts the managers of these concerns to put a circus on paper that could never have an existence under the sun is something that it is impossible to understand. They ask and they must have the patronage of the public they insult by spreading such absurdities upon the wall as the picture of one horse lying on his back with his legs up and another horse standing above him, their eight hoofs meeting; or of a man being blown from the mouth of a cannon, or indeed any of the other ridiculous and gaudy illustrations which are designed to catch the eye at a distance of one hundred yards and to hold the attention long enough to make the investigator of bill-board literature part with a half dollar. But it seems that circus managers and circus agents have no other idea of advertising than to make the ink and the colors on their posters say as much as the imagination can suggest, and to make people pay for the privilege of finding out that they have been bamboozled. It seems to be remunerative though, for a circus can create greater commotion in a town than a big fire, and from the moment it pitches its tents—a city of canvas, they usually call it—until the glory of the visit fades, thousands are interested in it and the opening of its doors always finds a throng with tickets in hand anxious to get inside as early as possible, to have a thorough look at the menagerie and in the other way, by putting in full time to get their money's worth out of the show.

The circus always comes to town with a flourish. There is a grand street parade. The dozen elephants and sixteen camels follow the band wagon, and then comes the cavalcade, gentlemen in court costumes and ladies in rich trailing robes with jaunty hat of gay ribbons and feathers flying in the breeze. The lion tamer is in the cage with the feeble animals that he keeps stirring up with his whip; the clown in his little chariot with his trick mule, affords amusement to the children along the line; then the snake charmer rolls by fondling the slimy reptiles, and after that comes a procession of red wagons with trampish drivers in red coats, and perhaps there are some grotesque figures on top of the wagons. At the rear some enterprising clothier has an advertising vehicle. That is about all there is to it, if we add the Undine wagon that has a place sometimes at the head and sometimes in the middle of this "gorgeous street pageant." Still it goes from one end of town to the other, scaring horses and creating the greatest excitement among the circus-going public. The $10,000 beauty "gag" that worked so successfully last season when Adam Forepaugh claimed to have paid that amount to Miss Louise Montague, a variety actress, for merely appearing in the street parade, riding on a howdah high upon the back of his largest elephant and for participating in the grand entree at the opening of each performance. Barnum tried to make some free advertising for himself this season by announcing that he would pay $10,000 to the handsomest man and $20,000 to the handsomest lady, but he was shrewd enough to see that the scheme would not bring him back $30,000, so he allowed it to fall through.

This subject of costly beauties recalls an incident that took place in a Western theatre. At the house in question an actress was performing who, in times gone by, figured as the faithless sweetheart of an eminent sport in that very city. That gentleman hearing that his light of love was about to appear in a new line visited the theatre to see for himself whether or not it was really she. The memory of past troubles caused him to drink rather more than was good for him, and when he took his seat in the parquette near the stage, he was in a great measure incapacitated from acting with coolness and judgment. He believed he recognized the woman as the one who had caused him so much sorrow and trouble. His feelings got the better of him, and standing up in his seat he exclaimed:—

"You cost me $25,000, you cost me $25,000, and I'll cut your d—d heart out!"

This outcry brought one of the members of the company to her assistance, armed with a property revolver, and the air was full of war and rumors of war until the police arrived. The $25,000 victim was led out and the play went on.

TWENTY-FIVE THOUSAND DOLLAR BEAUTY.

While the parade is on its way back to the circus lot, I will tell the reader of an exciting parade that was witnessed at Runcorn, England, last summer: Messrs. Sanger & Son, who were exhibiting in the town, had announced a procession in connection with their great hippodrome, and from twelve to one o'clock, although rain was falling very heavily, large crowds of people began to assemble in the Market Square, Bridge Street and the wide space in front of the Town Hall and the public offices. To one very large car forty horses had been harnessed, to be driven through the town by one man. This was drawn up waiting for the start, almost opposite the Guardian office, while higher up Bridge Street stood twelve ponies harnessed to a smaller car. Near the Town Hall stood two other cars, and as one o'clock approached and the rain showed signs of abating, the procession was expected very shortly to form and make the circuit of the town. Suddenly, among the horses standing near to the shop of Messrs. Handley & Co., there was a great commotion, and loud shouts were heard to "Clear the road." The twelve ponies had taken fright and were rushing down Bridge Street towards the fountain. There was no one in charge, and it was evident that some very serious accident would result from the panic which seemed to have seized the horses. To make matters worse, the forty horses became frightened, and, with the ponderous car behind them, joined the ponies in their gallop. Many persons sought refuge in the shops and doorways. Those who were not fortunate enough to reach this shelter were trampled upon and crushed, and the scene was one of the wildest excitement. At one moment it seemed as though the great colossal car would be overturned among the struggling crowd, while the plate-glass windows in the shops on the south side of the street were within an inch of being smashed. The scene was not of long duration, but it lasted long enough to injure at least ten people and imperil the safety of hundreds more. When nearing the commissioners' offices, several constables who were in the court-room, hearing the noise outside, rushed into the street, and were just in time to seize the ponies by the heads and turn them down Mersey Street before they reached the Royal Hotel. The horses, through the courageous exertions of the police and some of Messrs. Sanger & Son's drivers, were brought to a standstill opposite the Royal Hotel.

Many people affect to be indifferent to the attractions of the circus, saying that they saw one when they were young and as all circuses are the same there is no use in going to see another. These people are about right. There has been nothing new in the genuine features of the circus for the past fifty years. There are a few deceptive tricks that have been seen only of late years but they are mere ephemeral illusions, easy of explanation, and time will take them out of the circus ring as it took the lion-taming act. I can remember the time when the cage of lions was dragged into the middle of the arena and amid the greatest excitement the alleged lion-tamer went in among the animals, beat them about, lay down upon the back of one and put his head between the wide-open jaws of another. Now that performance is lost sight of among the multitude of curiosities in the menageries. The great unchangeable features of a show, the gymnastic, acrobatic and equestrian work, are the same now that it was a half century ago. Still with all its want of novelty it is attractive, as are all shows, and grown people have been known to share the enthusiasm of the little ones in playing circus after witnessing a performance and while the sawdust fever was still on them. A short, funny sketch that appeared in the Louisville Courier-Journal will do to illustrate the hold the circus has upon the average boy's heart. The writer says:—

"After the circus had opened to the public yesterday a gray-haired colored brother, who held the hand of a boy of fourteen as both stood gazing at the tent, shook his head in a solemn manner, and observed:—

"'It's no use to cry 'bout it, sonny, kase we am not gwine in dar no how.'

"'But I want ter,' whined the boy.

"'In course you does. All chill'en of your aige run to evil an' wickedness, an' dey mus' be sot down on by dose wid experience.'

ADAM FOREPAUGH.

"'You used to go,' urged the boy.

"'Sartin I did, but what was de result? I had sich a load on my conscience dat I couldn't sleep nights. I cum powerful nigh bein' a lost man, an' in dem days de price of admishun was only a quarter, too.'

"'Can't we both git in for fifty cents?'

"'I 'speck we might, but to-morrer you'd be bilin' ober wid wickedness an' I'd be a backslipper from de church. Hush up, now, kase I hain't got but thirty cents, and dar am no show fur crawlin' under de canvas.'

"The boy still continued to cry, and the old man pulled him behind a wagon, and continued:

"'Henry Clay Scott, which had you rather do—go inter de circus an' den take de awfullest lickin' a boy eber got, or have a glass of dat red lemonade an' go to Heaben when you die? Befo' you decide let me explain dat I mean a lickin' which will take ebery inch of de hide off, an' I also mean one of dem big glasses of lemonade. In addishun, I would obsarve dat a circus am gwine on in Heaben all de time, an' de price of admisshun am simply nominal. Now, sah, what do you say?'

"The boy took the lemonade, but he drank it with tears in his eyes."

A man living near Bloomington, Illinois, in 1870, sold his stove to a neighbor to obtain funds to take his family to a circus that had pitched its tents near the city. When he got back he said he was not a bit sorry, that "he'd seen the clown, an' the gals a ridin', an' the fellows doin' flip-flaps, an' waz so perfectly satisfied that ef another suck-cus came along next year, an' he had a stove, he'd go to see it on the same terms ag'in."

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CHAPTER XXXIX.
UNDER THE CANVAS.

The one great wish of the small boy's heart, as he stands at a respectful distance from the ticket wagon watching the huge canvas rise and sink—apparently with as much ease as the flag flies from the top of the centre-pole—is to get inside the tent before the band begins to play. He may not have a cent to pay the admission, but he has Micawberish hopes that far surpass any money value that might be placed upon a small boy, that something will turn up to gain him admission to the show. He knows that if the canvas-men give him a good chance he can crawl in under the cloth and make his way up through the seats. He has been told that if he is caught at such a trick the showmen will drag him to the dressing-tent and fill his hair full of powdered sawdust. The canvas-men are, however, vigilant; besides that, they are lazy and do not care to move around, so the small boy must be content to throw hand-springs in the sawdust-sprinkled lot, and keep on hoping until the show is out. In this respect the minute boy does not betray the same shrewdness credited to a Baltimore girl. She was on a visit to her brother's ranche near Austin, Texas, when a small circus came along. It is considered the acme of honesty to beat the circus in that region—in fact, paying is heartily deprecated. Although only a month in the place, the Baltimore belle was thoroughly imbued with the cowboy spirit, in as far as "beating" the circus was concerned, and when the show pitched its tents she made up her mind as to what she was going to do. At night, when the show was under headway, she calmly approached the circus tent on stilts, and viewed the first half of the performance through the opening between the canvas and the roof. One of the fighters of the show detecting something wrong, crept around with a club to "smash" the intruder, but received a kick in the eye from the fair stilt performer, and was so taken aback that the cowboys had time to rally to her support and raid the show while she at a safe distance applauded the conquering herders. The troupe left town that night in a sadly damaged condition.

"BEATING" THE CIRCUS.

Until late years circuses generally gave a balloon ascension before the afternoon performance took place, and sometimes a slack-wire performance was added. The latter free exhibition dropped out of sight a short time ago, and since 1876 there have been few circus balloon ascensions; they have been abandoned on account of the danger and frequency of accidents. Everybody remembers the fate of Donaldson and Greenwood, the former an æronaut in the employ of Barnum at the time, the latter, a Chicago newspaper reporter. They left Chicago July 15, 1875, in a tattered old balloon. It was a remarkably fine day, and not the remotest shadow of danger fell across the sunshine. The balloon was carried out over the lake, disappeared from view, and the fate of the missing men was not known until a portion of the tattered balloon and the body of Greenwood, with his note-book and other articles that helped to identify him, were found on the Michigan shore of the great lake. The balloon had been wrecked and both men had perished in the waves. Donaldson's body was never recovered. An imaginary sketch of this fatal trip was written by John A. Wise, the æronaut, who himself perished in Lake Michigan while attempting to complete a night ascension. He and George Burr started from St. Louis at dusk, and as the ærial ship was vanishing into the clouds it was seen for the last time. For weeks nothing was heard of the missing men or the balloon. They were thought to be lost in the Michigan prairies. At last Burr's body was found on the east shore of Lake Michigan. Wise's remains were never recovered.

WASHINGTON H. DONALDSON.

A lady balloonist met with a terrible death at Cuantla, Mexico, some time ago. A great crowd assembled to witness the balloon ascension of Senorita Catalina Georgio, a beautiful girl only seventeen years old. There was no car attached to the balloon, only the trapeze on which the girl performed. The balloon shot up amid the deafening cheers of the crowd which was present. Catalina, meanwhile, was seen clinging to the trapeze and performing daring feats of agility. When the balloon was three-quarters of a mile high it suddenly exploded and fell to the ground with the unfortunate girl. Her dead body was found horribly crushed and mangled beside the wrecked balloon. The remains were tenderly cared for by the natives.

CATALINA GEORGIO'S FRIGHTFUL DEATH.

A frightful balloon accident occurred lately at Courbevoie, near Paris. A large crowd had assembled to witness the novel and perilous ascent of a gymnast called August Navarre, who had volunteered to perform a number of athletic feats on a trapeze suspended from a Montgolfier balloon named the Vidouvillaise. Rejecting the advice of bystanders, Navarre refused to allow himself to be tied to the trapeze. There was no car attached to the balloon. At about five o'clock the Vidouvillaise was let loose from its moorings and rose majestically in the air. Navarre, hanging on to the trapeze, appeared quite confident, and repeatedly saluted the spectators. When, however, the balloon had reached a height of nearly one thousand yards the crowd was horrified to see him suddenly let go the bar and fall. The descent was watched in breathless excitement. At last the body reached the ground, striking with such force that it made a hole in the earth two feet deep, and rebounded four yards. It was crushed and mangled almost beyond recognition. Meanwhile the balloon, freed from its human ballast, shot up with lightning speed, and soon disappeared from view. Late in the evening it burst and fell at Menilmontant, much to the consternation of the inhabitants of that busy Parisian quarter.

The day after Donaldson's fatal ascension, Dave D. Thomas, then press agent for Barnum, and filling the same place still, made a successful ascension. Mr. Thomas is familiar with ballooning, and often laments that the days of ærial ascensions as circus advertisements are past.

While waiting for the performance to begin let us drop into the dressing-tent. It is divided in the middle by a strip of canvas about seven feet wide, and this half space is again divided into dressing-rooms, one for the men, the other for the women. The large space is the green-room of the circus. It is not only that, but it is the property-room. The performers are preparing for the grand entree. Helmets are lying around loose, and wardrobes appear to be in a state of great confusion. Cheap velvet gaily bespangled is quite plentiful. It looks best at a distance. Quantities of white chalk are brought into use, each man's face being highly powdered, his eyebrows blackened, etc. The dressing-room is small and there is apparently much confusion while the performers are donning their respective costumes. But each knows what his duty is, and does it accordingly, without really interfering with anyone else. On the other side is the ladies' room; into this we are not permitted to cast our profane peepers, but we know from exterior knowledge that paint and powder, short dresses and flesh tights are rapidly converting ordinary women into equestrienne angels. Outside of the dressing-rooms are the horses, ranged in regular order. At a given signal the riders appear, mount and enter the ring. As they are dashing about in apparent recklessness let us look more clearly at them. They all look young and fresh, but there are old men in the party who for twenty-five or thirty years have figured in the sawdust ring. Chalk hides their wrinkles, dyestuffs their gray hairs, and skull caps their baldness. Yonder lady who sits her steed gracefully, and who looks as blooming as a rose on a June morning, is not only a mother, but a grandmother. And there is George who was engaged last winter to do "nothing, you know." He finds his duties embrace riding, leaping, tumbling, object-holding, and occasionally in short times drive a team on the road. There is one rider who was formerly a manager himself. He had a big fortune once, but a few bad seasons swamped it, and he is now glad to take his place as a performer on a moderate salary. Returning to the dressing-room after the entree, we find the clown engaged in putting the finishing touches to his make-up. We must look closely at him to recognize him. He does not seem to be the same fellow we met at the breakfast table, in stylish clothes and a shirt-front ornamented with a California diamond. He has given himself an impossible moustache with charcoal, and has painted bright red spots on his cheeks. You think him a mere boy as he springs into the ring, but he has been a mere boy for many a long year, and his bones are getting stiff and his joints ache in spite of his assumed agility. The "gags" that he repeats and the songs that make you laugh are not funny to him, for he has repeated them in precisely the same inflection for an indefinite number of nights. He comes out to play for the principal act of horsemanship. Meantime in the dressing-room, if it is damp or chilly, the performers are wrapping themselves in blankets or moving about to keep warm. When the bareback rider returns from the ring he usually disrobes, takes a bath and dons his ordinary attire; but the less important performers must keep themselves in readiness to render any assistance which they may be called upon to perform.

There is but little repose for the weary circus people during a season. Frequently they stay but one day in a place, and the next town is fifteen or twenty miles distant. All the properties must be packed up, the helmets and cheap velvet, the tights and the tunics must be stowed away and the journey made by night. The following day brings a recurrence of the dangers and toil of circus life.

A clown who was importuned by some young ladies of Mill City, Iowa, as they passed the dressing-tent, to let them in, said he'd do it for a kiss from each. There were four in the party and they held a brief consultation when they came back and wanted to know if one kiss wouldn't do.

"Yes, one each," said Mr. Merryman, who had his paint on and looked anything but pretty.

Again they consulted, and at last agreed. They were respectable young ladies and were slow to do anything that might compromise them, still they kissed the clown, who lifted a flap of the tent and passed in each as she paid the osculatory fee. The kisses did his old heart good, and when he went into the ring so fresh and happy did he feel that he actually got off a new and good joke, which is an extraordinary thing for a clown. The clown is pretty much the whole show to the little folks, and there are many grown people who cherish fondly the childish admiration they had had for the retailer of old jokes and singer of poor comic songs. He talks and jumps around as lightly as if he were a young man; but often if the reader could be around when the chalk and the streaks of black and red have been washed off he would see that the light-hearted laugh-provoker is an old man wrinkled and gray, and that he is to be pardoned for not being able to say anything funny that would be new at his time of life. I like everything about a clown, his clothes, his comical hat, his old jokes, his poor voice and his worse songs. He tries to amuse other people's children, and therefore I am glad when I hear he has children of his own, as the following touching story told in verse has something to say about:—

THE CLOWN'S BABY.

It was out on the western frontier—
The miner's, rugged and brown,
Were gathered around the posters;
The circus had come to town!
The great tent shone in the darkness,
Like a wonderful palace of light,
And rough men crowded the entrance—
Shows didn't come every night.

Not a woman's face among them!
Many a face that was bad,
And some that were only vacant,
And some that were very sad;
And behind the canvas curtain,
In a corner of the place,
The clown with chalk and vermilion,
Was "making up" his face.

A weary-looking woman,
With a smile that still was sweet,
Sewed on a little garment,
With a candle at her feet.
Pantaloons stood ready and waiting;
It was the time for the going on,
But the clown in vain searched wildly—
The "property baby" was gone!

He murmured, impatiently hunting,
"It's strange that I cannot find—
There! I've looked in every corner;
It must have been left behind."
The miners were stamping and shouting—
They were not patient men;
The clown bent over the cradle—
"I must take you, little Ben!"

The mother started and shivered,
But trouble and want were near;
She lifted her baby gently,
"You'll be very careful, dear?"
"Careful! You foolish darling—"
How tenderly it was said!
What a smile shone through the chalk and paint—
"I love each hair of his head!"

The noise rose into an uproar,
Misrule for the time was king;
The clown, with a foolish chuckle,
Bolted into the ring.
But as with a squeak and a flourish,
The fiddles closed their tune,
"You hold him as if he was made of glass!"
Said the clown to Pantaloon.

The jovial follow nodded:
"I've a couple myself," he said;
"I know how to handle 'em, bless you!
Old fellow, go ahead!"
The fun grew fast and furious,
And not one of all the crowd
Had guessed the baby was alive,
When he suddenly laughed aloud.

Oh, that baby-laugh! It was echoed
From the benches with a ring,
And the roughest customer there sprung up
With "Boys, it's a real thing!"
The ring was jammed in a minute,
Not a man that did not strive
For "A shot at holding the baby—"
The baby that was "alive!"

He was thronged by kneeling suitors
In the midst of the dusty ring,
And he held his court right royally—
The fair little baby-king—
Till one of the shouting courtiers,
A man with a bold, hard face,
The talk of miles of the country,
And the terror of the place,

Raised the little king on his shoulder,
And chuckled, "Look at that!"
As the baby fingers clutched his hair.
Then "Boys, hand round that hat!"
There never was such a hat-full
Of silver, and gold, and notes;
People are not always penniless
Because they don't wear coats.

And then, "Three cheers for the baby!"
I tell you those cheers were meant;
And the way in which they were given
Was enough to raise the tent.
And there was a sudden silence,
And a gruff old miner said:
"Come boys, enough of this rumpus!
It's time it was put to bed."

So looking a little sheepish,
But with faces strangely bright,
The audience, somewhat lingeringly,
Flocked out into the night.
And the bold-faced leader chuckled,
"He wasn't a bit afraid!
He's as game as he is good-looking—
Boys, that was a show that paid!"

The public at large has but a very vague idea of how a circus is run, and the people, besides the managers and regular employees, who make a living by it. When the tenting season is about to open, a class of people, who in the winter hang about the saloons, variety theatres and gambling hells of the large cities, start for the circuses to bid for what are known as the "privileges," which are, as a rule, understood to embrace not only the candy and lemonade-stands and the side-shows, but all sorts of gambling devices by which the unsuspecting countryman is fleeced out of his earnings, or borrowings, as the case may be. Monte men, thimble-riggers, sweat-cloth dealers, and all classes of gamblers and thieves who have not yet risen to the dignity of "working" the watering-places and summer resorts, look upon the route of a circus as their legitimate field of operation. The circus proprietor who rents the lot upon which his tent or tents are pitched has the right to sublet such portions of the ground as he does not use, for such purposes as he deems proper, and which will not make him personally amenable to the laws for whatever crimes may be committed there. It has been shown that in many cases the managers not only sell to gamblers the privilege of locating on the ground and robbing the patrons of the circus, but also receive a share of the ill-gotten wealth.

"There are," said Mr. Coup, the circus owner, to an interviewer, "lots of shows with big bank accounts who have made their money by actually robbing their patrons. They used to swindle on the seats, but that is done away with now entirely, or nearly so. Of course, I am not at liberty to mention names, but I could astonish you by designating shows the managers of which have made the greater portion of their money in this way. But a great trick which is being practised is this: A man is sent ahead of the show who is not known to have any connection whatever with it. In fact, he denies that he has anything to do with it, and yet he is really employed by the managers. This man canvasses the town and finds some man who has a big bank account and who is gullible enough to confide in strangers. The agent makes his acquaintance, gets into his confidence, and then with a great show of secrecy informs him how he can make a pile of money when the circus comes along. The innocent citizen bites at the bait and is steered against a gambling scheme either inside or outside of the tent, and loses often large sums of money. Perhaps he is a man whose social standing prevents him from making his loss known, or, more frequently, he fails to suspect the agent, who blusters around and declares that he, too, has lost money on the scheme. And thus the show goes from town to town, making almost as much by stealing from its patrons as it does at the ticket wagon. There are shows which make from $30,000 to $40,000 a season in this way and that goes a good way toward paying for their printing, and is quite an item. I have made war on these fellows for years and am determined to keep it up. If I cannot run a show without having a lot of gambling schemes attached to it, why then I'll stop running a show. I abolished everything of the kind last season, even down to the selling of lemonade in the seats. I allow lemonade to be sold now, but the men are watched carefully and the first one caught swindling my patrons, off goes his head."

"Do you not find it difficult to keep gamblers and confidence men away from your show?"

"I did at first, but it is now known among them that I will not allow it and they keep away. My life has been threatened several times just on account of this, but I still live and still propose to keep up the fight. I have been offered as high as $1,000 a week for the privilege to rob my patrons by camp-followers, so you can see that the privilege is worth something. In Georgia a gang threatened publicly to kill me on sight for refusing to let them hang around my tents, but some of my men went for them and cleaned them out very effectually. The side-show privileges are sold only on condition that no gambling shall be carried on in the tents and that the patrons shall not be swindled in any way. The side-shows can be made to pay without robbery. Last season the side-shows that traveled with my show, made $75,000, which was more than I made."

---

CHAPTER XL.
ACROBATICS AND EQUESTRIANISM.

Nearly every man connected with the ring work of a circus is an acrobat of one kind or other. His ability may be limited to turning a single somersault, still he will be brought into the arena with the rest of the company and opportunity will be afforded him to do his best. It is not expected, however, to recruit the ranks from such a class. Children must be trained to the profession, and a long and arduous training it requires. If their parents are professionals their studies will be all the more severe, and cuffs and blows will be the only encouragement given their struggling children. Fathers have been known to beat their sons, to kick them in the presence of the audience, and to add other and severer punishment when the young acrobat reaches home. The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children could find plenty to do in preventing brutal parents from abusing their little folks, if not in putting an end entirely to the swift and rough training that boys are put through in order that they may be hired out or leased to circus managers. In New York I understand that broken-down ring performers have schools in which boys are taught every branch of the circus business, just as there are riding schools where young men and young women may learn pad-riding and go even as far as riding bareback. The schools for acrobats are usually conducted by cruel, heartless fellows who urge the pupils to their tasks with a club, and while forgetting to say a kind word when the pupil has done well, will never fail to say a harsh one when any mistake has been made. These places are filled up with all the appliances of a gymnasium—bars, ropes, weights, trapezes, tight-rope, etc. Circus managers in want of talent for small shows going South or West apply here and take their choice of the boys. A bargain is quickly made and the child, for many of them are still mere children, goes forth to join the throng engaged from April until October in amusing the public in the sawdust arena.

BAREBACK RIDING.

When the child gets into the circus ring there need be hope of no further sympathy. Its task is set and must be done at all hazards. A failure one time to accomplish a feat must be followed by another and another attempt until the feat is at last satisfactorily presented. Olive Logan was at a circus performance at Cincinnati at which she witnessed an extraordinary instance of cruelty on the part of a circus proprietor to a child rider. The circus was owned and managed by a certain clown. The clown-proprietor, Miss Logan goes on to say, introduced a little girl to the audience, saying that she would exhibit her skill in riding. He stated that the horse was somewhat unused to the ring and if it should happen that the rider fell, no one need entertain any apprehension of serious accident, as the arena was soft and injury would be impossible. It was surely an unhappy introduction for the child, and calculated to fill her with fear and doubt. The child whirled rapidly round the ring two or three times, using neither rein nor binding strap. She stood on one foot, then changed to the other. After this she was called upon to jump the stretchers. Had her horse been well trained, the feat would have been no very difficult one. But she became entangled in the cloth and fell to the ground, under the horse's feet. She was placed again on the back of the horse and compelled once more to try the feat. Her fall had not given her new confidence and she fell a second time. Evidently much against her inclination and in spite of her trembling and her tears, nature's protest against barbarity, she was tossed again to her place. But her nerve had gone. She was utterly demoralized. Judgment of distance, and faith in herself were lost. Again she attempted to execute the leap. Again she fell to the ground, striking heavily upon her head. She rolled directly under the horse's feet and only by a sheer chance escaped a terrible death. The audience,—more merciful than those within the ring, by this time had been thoroughly aroused and indignant. Cries and shouts were heard from all quarters: "Shame! shame!" "That'll do!" "Take her out! take her out!" came up from every side. It would not answer to disregard such commands, and with a smile the ring master went to the child, raised her from the dust where she lay, and led her, crying and sobbing, to the dressing-tent.

TRAPEZE.

The men and women who perform at dizzy heights on the trapeze and flying rings frequently meet with terrible accidents. Still the difficulty of these feats is being constantly increased, and performers, not satisfied with having their eyes open during their perilous flight from one trapeze to another, envelope their heads in sacks, and although not wholly blinding themselves, very materially interfere with the vision, which in all such instances should not be obstructed. A typical accident of the trapeze kind happened at a performance of old John Robinson's circus at South Pueblo, Colorado, on June 12, 1882. While the Alfredo Family were performing on the trapeze, the stake which supports the rope pulled out of the ground, which had been softened by the afternoon storm, and let the performers—three in number, William, Lewis, and his wife, Emma Alfredo—suddenly to the ground. The act is a sort of double bicycle and trapeze performance. William propels a bicycle back and forth on a line stretched from pole to pole, and Lewis and Emma perform on two trapeze-bars suspended from the bicycle. When the stake pulled up last night the rope collapsed just at the moment that Lewis was hanging by his feet from the lower bar and Emma from the upper, both straight down, with arms folded. Emma caught herself on the lower bar and the side ropes, but her husband fell straight to the ground, alighting on the back of his head, the fall being twelve or fourteen feet. He was at once removed to his dressing-room, and the physicians who were summoned said that his spine was injured. Half an hour later he was removed to a hotel, where he died at four P. M., June 13th.

A gymnast who fell from a trapeze in New Orleans gave the following account of his sensations: "Amid the sea of faces before me I looked for a familiar one, but in vain, and, turning, I stepped back to the rope by which we ascended to the trapeze, and going up hand over hand was soon seated in my swinging perch. As I looked down I caught sight of a face in one of the boxes, that at once attracted my attention. It was that of a beautiful girl, with sweet blue eyes, and golden hair falling unconfined over her shoulders in heavy, waving masses. Her beautiful eyes, turned toward me, expressed only terror at the seeming danger of the performer, and for the moment I longed to assure her of my perfect safety, but my brother was by my side and we began our performance. In the pauses for breath I could see that sweet face, now pale as death, and the blue eyes staring wide open with fear, and I dreaded the effect of our finish, which—being the drop act—gives the uninitiated the impression that both performers are about to be dashed headlong to the stage. Having completed the double performance I ascended to the upper bar, and, casting off the connect, we began our combination feats. While hanging by my feet in the upper trapeze, my brother being suspended from my hands (the lower bar being drawn back by a super), I felt a slight shock, and the rope began slowly to slip past my foot. My heart gave a grand jump, and then seemed to stop, as I realized our awful situation. The lashing which held the bar had parted, the rope was gliding round the bar, and in another moment we should be lying senseless on the stage. I shouted 'under' to the terrified 'super,' who instantly swung the bar back to its place, and I dropped my brother on it as the last strand snapped and I plunged downward. I saw the lower bar darting toward me and I made a desperate grasp at it, for it was my last chance. I missed it! Down through the air I fell, striking heavily on the stage. The blow rendered me senseless and my collar bone was broken. I was hurried behind the scenes, and soon came to my senses. My first thought was that I must go back and go through my performance at once, and I actually made a dash for the stage—but I was restrained, and it was many weeks before I was able to perform again."

MDME. LASALLE.

The circus-goers of a decade ago were accustomed to tight-rope and slack-wire performances in the ring, when old men and young women, emulative of the celebrated Blondin, went through some wonderful evolutions in mid-air. Now the tight-rope and loose wire have both almost entirely disappeared from the ring, and only in the small shows are they given a place in the programme. Still there are many excellent performers in this line who find employment on the variety stage among specialty people. The best of these is Zanfretti, the pantomime clown, who though an old man displays wonderful agility when with balance-pole in hand he finds himself at the half-way point on his rope. Ladies who have taken to the hempen path have attained prominence as rope-walkers. One of the most beautiful and at the same time dangerous, of the performances that the small shows offer to their audiences is that of Madame Lasalle, who places her little eight-year-old daughter in a wheelbarrow filled with flowers, and on a rope thirty feet above the ground without net beneath and with nothing but hard ground to receive both in case of a fall, trundles the barrow over a long rope while the people below look up in breathless fear lest the barrow tip and a dreadful accident result before the feat is accomplished. Tight-rope walking, however, is not nearly so difficult as it appears to be. The performer needs steady nerves, a cool eye, firm limbs and a balance-pole, the last-named article being the most essential. Training is required, of course, but it is not of the rigorous and protracted kind that other feats demand.

The training of riders is not so difficult or attended with such dangers, although it is perilous enough. If a circus rider has a son or daughter he wishes to bring up for the ring he will begin by carrying the child, as soon as it is strong enough, upon the horse with him, thus accustoming it to standing upon the animal in motion; but if a boy or girl is taken up at an age when it is no longer easy to carry him around the ring on the back of a horse, he is put in training with what the circus people call "the mechanic." This is a beam extending out from a pivoted centre-pole and having a rope hanging down at the edge of the ring with a strap at the end which is fastened around the pupil's waist. The rope is long enough to allow the pupil to stand upon the back of an animal, and by means of its support he is kept in an upright position until he gets accustomed to the motion of a horse, and is prevented from falling should he miss his footing. He begins with a pad on the back of a gentle animal, and keeps on with "the mechanic" until he is able to stand alone on the horse, from which time on the pad is discarded and the pupil goes it bareback. Ed. Showles, a good rider and prominent in his line, told me that it takes about six months to break a boy in so that he will be able to ride fairly, but that a girl may be taught in three months.

This training goes on during the winter months while the circus is in quarters. A small ring is always a department of the winter quarters, and in this the trained animals are kept in practice and new ones are broken in, the whip being freely used upon all in giving them their lessons. A horse that is intended for the educated class after having acquired the ordinary manœuvres, for instance, must learn to get up on his hind legs and paw the air with the fore legs, as we see them in pictures of the Ukraine stallions, etc. To do this the animal must have his haunches strengthened. By whipping the fore legs he is made gradually to rise on the hind ones. The horse finds it difficult at first, but judicious whipping gets him up in the air at last and the sight of the threatening whip keeps him there as long as there is strength in his haunches to keep him up.

ANNIE LIVINGSTONE.

"The work of the leading equestrienne is one of the most laborious in the whole range of the circus profession. It requires physical courage of the highest order, combined with great power of endurance and a capacity for adopting oneself to a constant change of scene and surrounding. People who witness only the brilliant performances in the ring in an atmosphere laden with light and music, little dream of the wearisome toil and drudgery which precede them."

The speaker was Miss Lilly Deacon, a fair-haired English lady, with the form of a Juno, who arrived in this country from London sometime ago to fill an engagement as leading equestrienne in Forepaugh's circus. As she appeared in the parlor in an interview with a Philadelphia reporter, she might naturally have been taken for the preceptress of some fashionable English boarding-school, or the daughter of some stiff old country squire of Kent or Sussex—or anybody, in fact, rather than the daring rider whose performances have bewildered and startled the circus-going multitude of London, Paris, and Berlin. In feature and manner her appearance was that of the English gentlewoman, while her conversation throughout revealed a delicacy of thought and expression common only to the well-bred lady.

CIRCUS RIDERS.

"The training necessary to success in equestrian performances," continued Miss Deacon, "is monotonous in the extreme and in some parts very dangerous. None but those in rugged health ever withstand it, and no one without a perfect physical organization should undertake it. The ordinary exercises of the riding-school are trifles as compared with the tasks imposed in professional training. When a woman has obtained all the knowledge to be acquired in a riding-school, she has only got the rudiments of real equestrian art. She must then enter the circus ring and familiarize herself with the duties required of her there. She must be prepared to endure falls and bruises without number, together with frequent scoldings and corrections from the instructors. No woman, unless she be possessed of extraordinary natural skill, ought to appear in the ring before an audience until she has graduated from a riding-school, and then practised in the ring four or five hours every day for at least six months. Those six months will be a period of torture and weariness to her, but she must undergo them or run the risk of almost certain failure and humiliation upon her first appearance in public.

"The best equestrian instructor in Europe—in fact the only one of established reputation—is M. Salmonsky of Berlin. He is one of the grandest horsemen in the world, and in his great circus includes some of the finest stock on the continent. He saw me first in London, my native place, many years ago when I was performing with my brothers and sisters in Henley's Regent Street circus, and offered to take me with him to Berlin and complete my training. I accepted, and entered his circus at the German capital, where I received the most careful instruction he could give me.

"M. Salmonsky would send me into the ring with his most spirited horses every day and stand by to direct my exercises. Sometimes I thought I should never survive the terrible discipline, and often thought I should go back to London and content myself with being a second-rate rider, but the kindness of my good old instructor softened the innumerable bumps and bruises I received, and I at last triumphed. Emperor William and the crown prince attended the circus the night I made my debut, and complimented me formally and personally from their box.

"M. Salmonsky's course of training is very rigid, and that accounts for its thoroughness. The pupil must surrender wholly to the instructor and become very much as a ball of wax in his hands. At the outset, however, the scholar must obtain complete mastery of her horses. Fear is a quality utterly hostile to successful equestrianism, and unless the pupil can banish it at the start, she had better give up her ambition and abandon the profession. She will never succeed so long as she is afraid either of herself or her horses.

"But, as I said before, no one unacquainted with the dangerous preparatory instruction of an equestrienne has any proper estimate of the toil and weariness which her performances represent. One never knows the boundless capacity of the human frame for pains and aches until one has gone into training for circus-riding. What, with unruly horses, uncomfortable saddles, and the violent exercise involved, five or six hours of practice every day for months is certain to do one of two things—it either kills the pupil or brings her up to the perfection of physical womanhood. The hours for practice adopted by M. Salmonsky were in the forenoon—generally from eight to twelve, with, perhaps, another hour or two in the evening. To withstand this course one must dress loosely and become a devotee to plain living and the laws of hygiene. Any neglect of those principles, or any great loss of sleep usually results in broken health and professional failure.

"A great many persons who have the idea that the life of a circus star is a happy one—that it is a round of gorgeous tulle, tinsel, and ring-master-embellished splendor—would be sadly shocked if they could get a glimpse of the real thing. These people are mistaken. It is really a life of hard work at pretty much all hours of the day. When the splendid Mlle. Peerless isn't speeding around the ring, lashing her spirited bareback horse to fury, amid the plaudits of admiring thousands, she is mending her tights, stitching tinsel on her costume, anointing her bruises with balsam, or practising. The practice of the circus rider is like the rehearsal of the actor, only more so, for while the actor has only to rehearse until his first performance and then can go on playing a part without further trouble, the rider must put in an hour or two every day to keep her joints limber and her muscles in proper trim. But for this daily practice the performances of our circuses would be the theatre of many a tragedy instead of the scenes of mirth and gladness that they are.

The fascination that the circus has for people who know nothing about its hardships, is illustrated in the case of a Georgia lady, who lived in luxury, and whose husband was numbered among the most prominent of the State's citizens. She became imbued with a desire that she would like to sport tights and gauze dresses, and whirl about the ring on a spirited horse, so she struck up acquaintance with an equestrian, who happened to come along with a fly-by-night show, and eloped with him. The husband followed the show to Texas some months afterwards, and had an interview with his wife, who had became an equestrienne in a small way, doing a pad-riding act in each performance. An interview with the lady failed to make her see her folly. The husband now grew desperate, went away and hired a lot of cowboys whom he took to the show with the understanding that as soon as Mlle. Eulalia (the wife's adopted name) put in an appearance they were to rush forward, and seizing her carry her from the tent. When the lady appeared and had been lifted upon the horse by the clown, and the ring-master was touching up the heels of the animal to get him into a funeral jog, the husband and cowboys advanced. The husband seized his wife, dragged her from the horse, and while the cowboys fought back the performers and attaches he got her into a carriage and drove her away, leaving the audience in the wildest state of excitement. Kind words and gentle treatment brought the woman back to her senses, and she is now in her Georgia home and does not want any more circus experience.

DAN. RICE.

A Paris correspondent tells us that the funeral of that charming circus rider, Emilie Loisset, who was killed in April, 1882, was a Parisian event. The poor girl had long inhabited the United States, and had the freedom of manner and self-respect which so often distinguish the American young lady. She was on horseback one of the most graceful creatures imaginable. The figure was lithe, but without meagerness. Her poses in the saddle were simply exquisite, and they appeared unstudied. The features were elegantly formed, and the eyes expressed a brave, kind soul. Emilio Loisset was more popular than Sarah Bernhardt had ever been in Paris. Her less successful rivals in the circus were brought by her exceeding amiability to pardon her public triumphs. She did not seem ever to excite jealousy. On the days and nights on which she performed the circus was crowded with fashionable people. There was no amount of wealth that she might not have possessed had she not been a proud, strong-willed, self-respecting girl. She had no carriage and used to walk from the hippodrome to the Rue Oberkampf, where she had a small lodging on the fifth floor. A number of aristocratic and plutocratic admirers used to escort her to the door, through which none of them were allowed by her to pass. She aspired to create for herself a happy home and to marry somebody whom she could love and esteem. Her sister, Clotilde, is the morganatic wife of the Prince de Reuss, brother of the German ambassador at Constantinople, and is looked up to in her family circle. The admiration of the Empress Elizabeth for Emilie was increased by the fact that the charming circus rider spurned the address of the crown prince of Austria.

He was very much in love with her when she was in Germany, a couple of years ago, and would have forsworn marriage if she would have consented to be his Dubarry. She did not like the young man, and told him so. The empress, when she was here, used to make appointments to ride in the Bois with Emilie. Her majesty thought the ecuyere charming to look at, but wanting in firmness of hand. The horse on which she rode with imperial Elizabeth in the shaded alleys of the Bois was the one that occasioned her death by rolling over on her and driving the crutch of the saddle into her side. The august lady noticed the hardness of the brute's mouth, and the teasing and at the same time irresolute way in which Emilie held her bridle.

Emilie Loisset aimed at classic purity of style. There was nothing sensational in her manner. Her imperial friend Elizabeth thought her the most ladylike person she had seen in Paris. Her gestures were simple, her address amiable, and there was seriousness even in her smiles. Members of the Jockey Club spoke to her hat in hand. Her death was entirely due to the hard mouth of her horse. At a rehearsal the horse turned round, made for the stable, and, finding the door shut against him, reared up on his hind legs. Balance was lost, the horse rolled over, and the crutch of the saddle smashed in the ribs upon the lungs and heart. Poor Emilie had the courage in this state to walk to the infirmary, and when she was taken home to mount five flights of stairs.

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CHAPTER XLI.
A ROMANCE OF THE RING.

There is a great deal of romance in the life of a circus performer; and as the theatrical world is often penetrated in search of subjects rich in fiction, so, too, romancers enter the circus ring to find a hero or heroine for an o'er-true tale. In a Western paper I found the following pretty and touching story, which had evidently been copied from some other paper without credit, and which, as it deals with circus life, and particularly that feature of it we have just left—equestrianism—I believe it will be found interesting, and in reproducing it regret that I am unacquainted with the source whence it came, as the publication in which it originally appeared certainly deserves mention:—

The North American Consolidated Circus was to show in Shadowville. Shadowville was named after a legend of a haunted shadow that envelopes the town after sunset; and long before the canvas flaps were drawn back and the highly gilded ticket-wagon, with the "electric ticket seller" was ready to change greenbacks for the red-backed "open sesame," the ground and two streets leading to the lot were crowded with an anxious, expectant, peanut-munching, chewing-gum-masticating collection. The large posters and handbills announced in highly colored style the arrival of "Miss Nannie Florenstein, the most wonderful bareback rider in the known world!" while the little "gutter snipes" simply begged the people to "wait for Miss Nannie Florenstein."

The "doors are thrown open," and in less than twenty minutes the immense canvas is rising and falling with the concentrated respirations of five thousand people. Such a crowd! Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope, or Bret Harte would have been in ecstacies at the curious collection of faces, costumes, and vernacular, not to mention the expressions of genuine enthusiasm or surprise at the entries into the ring of even the sawdust rakers.

The band has ended its attempt at one of Strauss's waltzes, and the master of ceremonies, Mr. Lunt, walks consequentially into the ring, bowing to the vast concourse, who applaud at—they scarce know what.

"This way, Mr. Oliphant."

"Aye, aye, sir! 'Ere hi ham. Ah, sir! this bevy of smiling faces is refreshing even to the sawdust. [Applause.] What shall we have now, sir?" asks the jester (?) as he throws his hat in the air and catches it on—the ground.

"Mr. Tom Karl."

"Not the tender singer, sir?"

"You mean tenor singer! No! The pad rider, sir."

"It's all the same, Mr. Lunt; but time's flying. Ah! here is Karl! Now, then, Mr. Karl, that's the way I used to ride—(aside) in my mind."

And so it goes. One act after another, each one showing agility, daring, and skill; while the old jester and ring master entertain the crowd and rest the performers.

"Miss Nannie Florenstein, ladies and gentlemen, will now have the honor of appearing before you in her wonderful bareback act—riding a wild, untamed horse without either bridle, saddle or surcingle. An act never before accomplished—although often attempted—by any lady in the world! Miss Nannie Florenstein!"

A lithe, pretty little lady, with an anxious, careworn face, stepped into the ring, and, acknowledging the applause of the audience, vaulted lightly on the back of her black horse, and quicker than a flash of lightning was off. Around and around the forty-two-foot circle she goes, pirouetting, posturing, and doing a really graceful and wonderful act.

She is what all the papers had claimed she would be. There is a spirit of reckless daring flashing from her dark eyes as she jumps "the banners," and even the old and stoical ring master watches her anxiously as she attempts one act more daring than the rest—that of standing on her tip-toes on the horse's hindquarters and slowly pirouetting as the animal continues his mad career.

Suddenly she reels. She has lost her balance. Over she goes. Her head has struck the ring board. A shriek of a thousand anxious voices rends the air, and all is confusion.

She is bleeding, bleeding profusely from a cut in her forehead. A hundred hands are ready to convey her to the dressing-tent.

A rough-hewn specimen of a man suddenly appears in their midst. Where he came from or what moved him no one knows.

"Stand back! stand back, I say, and give the gal air! Do ye hear?"

Instinctively every one obeys him.

"Yere's a doctor. Doctor, this gal I know. 'Tend ter her, an' look ter me for the perkisites."

A quiet, confident-looking gentleman, Dr. Adams, is already by her side, stopping the flow of blood, and under his directions she is conveyed to her dressing-tent, the miner, tall, athletic, and with immense, sunburned beard, following anxiously in the rear.

The performance has been renewed and the crowd are forgetting the accident, when the miner appears in the ring dragging after him a performer, Monsieur La Forge, as he is called, "the strongest man in the world," who resists with all his might the iron muscles that are clinched like a vice on his collar.

A trapeze act is being performed, but all eyes are on the miner and his victim, not one of the performers having interfered, as they all dislike and fear La Forge for his bullying, bragadocio character.

"Leddies and gintlemin, this yere coyote am ther cause on that yere young gal er falling. I knows 'em both. He wanted ter kill her. Yes, yer did, ye skunk! He stole her when she war a chile from my sister. I knowed him; I knowed her. He hearn I was coming ter-day and he sed that he'd kill her. Lay down, yer he-bar! Lay down, I say.

"I was standing close on ter this ring when I seed him fire sumthing at her. She turned her putty eyes to see what it wur and over she went. Mister performers, ye'll 'scuse me fur interruptin' yer performances, but I thought I'd let these yere know who this skunk is. Now, then, Meester Ler Forgey, alias John Rafferty, what have yer got to say to my statement?"

"Hang him! Hang him! Strangle him!" broke in the crowd as they left their seats and rushed for the ring.

"Back! Back! Yer shan't hang him! Do yer hear? Ther fust man that raises a finger to throttle him, I'll pile in that yere saw dust! Do yer hear?"

His revolver levelled at the angry, grumbling crowd held them back. They all knew him. All knew old Ned Struthers, the most daring and best shot on the frontier; a man whom the redskins feared more than a whole army of trained United States soldiers; a remnant of a race of men who could settle the Indian question quicker, better, and with less expense than a whole army of Indian whiskey-selling agents; a man who they knew was dangerous and vindictive when aroused. So all kept their distance.

"Now, thin, yer goll-darned skunk, git up off yer knees! Git!"

"The doctor says Miss Florenstein is dying!" the ring master, pale and breathless, announced as he ran into the ring.

"Dying, did yer say, Mister? Oh, yer mean rattlesnake! Pray she may live—pray! Ef she dies, I'll hang yer scalp on her coffin! Do you hear?"

Poor Rafferty, by the intervention of the sheriff, who had a free pass to the show, and was present, was released from Ned Struthers's hold and taken away to the lock-up while Ned hurried to the bedside of his sister's child, Miss Nannie Florenstein.

She tossed and moaned upon her improvised bed of straw, an anguish-stricken few around her; for she was loved by the company. Her lustreless eyes would open appealingly, and looking with tear-bedimmed expression at some familiar face near her, try to smile them a recognition—a sad, painful recognition.

The doctor knelt beside her with one hand on her pulse and one on her bandaged forehead, and as he noticed the weary, faint pulsation, would shake his head, prophetic of her death.

The flaps of her tent are raised, and old Ned Struthers, hat in hand, looks in, asking in a mute way permission to enter. The doctor sees him and beckons him to her side.

Nannie hears his footstep as it crushes the straw beneath his weight, and, slowly opening her eyes, looks at him in an indifferent, inquisitive way. Suddenly they brighten; she closes them as if to think—in a minute opens them with a glad smile of affectionate recognition lighting up her handsome, pale face, raises her weak hand, beckons him to her, and as he takes her little fingers into his brawny palm she pulls him gently to her and whispers something in his ear. She cannot speak loud.

Old Ned cannot keep back the tears as they slowly run down his bronzed cheek and are lost in the shadow of his beard. He has now knelt beside her and answers her whispered question.

"Yes, little un! I'm yer uncle—yer loving uncle! Get well, little un, and I'll take care on yer." He could say no more.

She, poor little bruised body, turns to him a grateful smile of affection, and again drawing him to her, kisses his wrinkled old forehead, while the group who are silent witnesses of the scene turn away their heads in silent sorrow.

"Say, Doctor, can't we move her to sum more kumfortable quarters?—to ther hotel? Her aunty lives some twenty miles from yere, and I'll send for her."

Again Nannie opened her eyes, looking anxiously at the doctor, but a shadow darkened the tent opening and a young, handsome-faced man enters; instantly her eyes meet his, and she beckons him to her, and drawing him down to her side, whispers a few words in his ear. His face brightens, and turning to Ned—who is curiously watching this last scene—puts out a hard, muscular hand as he says:—

"Mr. Struthers, Nannie tells me you are her uncle. I am engaged to be married to Nan."

Old Ned eyed him curiously and doubtingly as he replies:—

"Wal, sir! what Nan tells yer is gospel truth. I'm her uncle; but about the other part of the bizness I ain't so sartin"—but seeing Nan's troubled face appealingly turned to him, he continues: "But was she right? Nan oughter be married. Ef she was she wouldn't be yere, a jumping on bar horses' backs, he showing her—I mean, sir, she oughter be at hum, and I'd do thar barback ridin' for ther crowd—thet is, our leetle crowd, ter hum; but 'scuse me, we must move Nan—what's yer bizness, sir?"

"I'm in the same business as Nan; we were brought up together, trained together, and next week we were to be married."

"Together, I serpose?" laughingly answered Ned, as he saw Nan brighten and smile at her intended's words.

Nan was carefully removed to a hotel, the proprietor of the circus defraying all the necessary expenses of a large room and extra attendance. Old Ned was about to start for his sister's, Nan's aunt, to attend her, as the doctor had taken a more hopeful view of her recovery if properly nursed, when he, entering the bar-room of the hotel, preparatory to starting, was suddenly made aware that he was the target of at least a dozen eyes, all staring with a perplexed gaze at him. First he thought it might be something in his dress, but this he quickly ascertained was not so; then he surveyed his face in the mirror opposite. At last he got angry.

"What are ye all staring at? Do I owe enny on yer ennything, eh?" He was defiant now.

"No, Mr. Struthers, you don't owe anybody here anything that I am aware of! We have congregated here to congratulate you. We have heard you had recovered your niece and your mine, and we come, as fellow-townsmen, to congratulate you." It was the town justice who spoke.

"My neese, pardner, I've diskivered, but ther mine I wanter sell out to-morrow, and——"

"Mr. Struthers, here's a telegram for you." A messenger boy handed him a telegram.

"Read that fir me, jidge, will yer?" And he handed the telegram to the justice of the peace.

"Mr. Struthers, it is an offer from Col. Allston, of San Francisco. He says: 'I will give you three hundred thousand dollars and one quarter share for your Red Gulch mine. Answer. Pay in cash.' That's all, sir, only the news has been on the street for half an hour!"

"Wal, I declare that's prime news! Let's take a drink, boys. Squire, you jist answer that tillygram, will yer? Tell Kurnel Allston I'll take the offer, and he may send the cash yere. Say, boys, thet's gud news, but I must tell my neese!"

"Mr. Struthers, before you go will you tell us about your niece?"

"Sartlingly! Yer see boys, abeout fifteen years agone my sister died an' left har leetle one—Nannie was her name—left her with a widder woman in 'Fresco. I war away in Nevady; hed only been gone three months. The young un war only nine y'ars old, an' when I got thet news I war struck dumb. Yer see, my sister hed heart disease. I started with my pack mule fir 'Fresco, but whin I 'rived thar the young un and the widder war gone. I hearn she hed gone to Brazzel with her husband, a man named Rafferty, a sirkus performer, so I waited. Abeout thet time I was takin sick with small-pox, and whin I got well I could not get no news on thet young un, so I gave up thar trial. Abeout one month ago I war at Red Gulch Canyon, er staking off my 'find,' whin Jim Parkins, my ole pard, wrote me from San Yosea thet my leetle un war with this yere sirkus, and thet her name was Nannie Florenstein. So I got on thar trail, found this yere Rafferty hed her as his'n—or raether his darter—got $200 a week fir her an' gave her nuthing, so I lit on him yere to-day, drapped on him foul, and ther war wolf meat in the air. But he crawled, an' now I'm going ter send him ter prison. I think he can do more good breakin' stuns than performing on cannons—eh?"

The crowd—it was a crowd by the time he had finished—gave the old man three rousing cheers and he escaped from them, hastening to Nannie's room to find her wonderfully improved and able to sit up.

* * * * *

The circus left Shadowville without "Miss Nannie Florenstein," and to-day she has returned from a village church a blooming bride, "Frank Grace, the celebrated bareback rider," being her happy husband.

Old Ned occupies a seat in their carriage.

"Uncle, you have made me a happy woman and Frank a happy man."

"Yas, leetle un, I serpose so. It is better than bar'-back riding, ain't it?"

"Yes, uncle. But how can I thank you for all the wealth you have showered on me, and for the home you have bought us?" again asked Nan, as she kissed his happy face.

"Wall, leetle un, I don't kinder want eny thanks, only plese don't—I mean ef yer hev eny children, leetle un, don't trust 'em ter eny widders ter sell 'em out ter sirkus people fur bar'-back ridin'."

"You may be certain of that Uncle Struthers," answered Frank, as he kissed his bride.

"Wall, I hope so. Enyhow, if yer do, see they doesn't fall from thar horse's back into a rich uncle's pocket—eh, you little pet!" And the carriage stopped in front of their new home, happy, bright and cheerful.

A HUMAN PYRAMID.

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CHAPTER XLII.
LEAPING AND TUMBLING.

One of the great features of all travelling tent-shows and, indeed, in the long years a very prominent feature of the legitimate show when juggling, tumbling and things of that kind were either interspersed between the acts of a tragedy, or filled the intermission between the tragedy and farce, was the acrobatic artist, the athlete, the gymnast, or whatever else you may feel like calling him. At the beginning of this century there were several renowned acrobats, and the number has increased to such an extent—and the general desire for exhibitions of physical skill—that acrobatics have taken possession of many fields. The song and dance man aims to introduce as much as possible of it into his act or sketch, and even the equestrian and equestrienne attempts and succeeds in combining perilous somersaulting with skilful riding, and the nearer the performer goes towards breaking his neck the better the people seem to like it.

The athlete who displayed his prowess or skill in the arenas of ancient Rome or Athens was a much more important personage than the circus performer of to-day. It was the passionate love of manly sports which produced the matchless Greek form, the acme of physical perfection. The successful athlete, acrobat, or charioteer of two thousand years ago was a popular hero, and his triumphs, loves, and career were immortalized in poetry and song. A successful athlete was then of more importance than the congressman of to-day. And yet the modern athlete, while occupying a much lower social scale than the ancient practitioner, is just as strong, and the acrobat of to-day is even more skilful than his classic predecessor. The circus performer thinks nothing of executing feats which no later than a century ago were deemed impossible.

Nearly every man and boy who appears in the circus arena now-a-days is counted a member of the corps that does both grand and lofty tumbling. In small shows the corps of leapers and tumblers is increased by the addition of several dummies who can do little more than turn a hand-spring or a forward somersault either on the sawdust or from the spring-board. Many of the best acrobats have begun their studies in the open streets by walking on their hands or hammering their heels against the bare bricks in somersaults or hand-springs; others have been educated in the ring following their fathers and sometimes grandfathers into the arenic profession. From the ranks of these two classes some of the best acrobats and athletes have sprung. I can recall several very good leapers and tumblers, whose earliest efforts were witnessed and wondered at in some vacant lot or friendly stable yard—where spring-boards were improvised and feats as dangerous as "revolving twice in the air without alighting on their feet"—as the ring master usually announces this act, in his most grandiloquent style—were attempted at the peril of young and frail necks. So too with many horizontal bar and trapeze performers. But to come back to the leapers and tumblers. The band gives a flourish and in they troop for the "ground act." They form in a row, and bow to the audience and then away each one whirls in a hand-spring and front somersault. Then they retire and singly, the men begin to tumble backward and forward across and about the ring, heads and feet are kept in a whirl until the final effort is reached, when the clown, who is frequently as good an artist in the business as the rest of his tumbling confreres, chases the swiftest of the number around the ring, the clown winding him up while the latter rolls like a wheel, in back hand-springs along the inner edge of the ring. A short interval, and the leapers come in,—the same men as those who have done the tumbling,—bow, and retire to follow each other rapidly down an inclined plane, bound from the spring-board, and after a forward somersault land safely and gracefully in the soft mattress beyond. One, two, three, four, and five horses are brought in and placed in front of the spring-board while the mattress is drawn farther away. As the number of horses increases and the peril and distance grow greater, the number of leapers decrease till at last three appear, or perhaps more horses are added to the equine line, the mattress is placed at the farther end of the ring and the ring-master—sometimes it is a lecturer like Harry Evarts, the "little Grant orator," of Coup's show for the past and present season—mounts a pedestal near the entrance, and with stentorian voice remarks: "Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Batchellor, the champion leaper of the world, will now throw a double somersault over nineteen horses [sometimes fewer elephants are employed]—that is to say, the gentleman will revolve twice in the air before alighting on his feet on the mattress—a feat that no other performer in this or any other country can accomplish. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Batchellor," and Mr. Batchellor, who is an excellent leaper, and shares the championship with Frank Gardner, formerly of Cole's show, but now with Barnum, makes the leap in a clever and comparatively easy manner.

This difficult feat, never executed, it is asserted, till within the past one hundred years, can now be witnessed at almost every first-class circus performance in this country—but not always for the same distance attained by Messrs. Batchellor and Gardner. Forty years ago the British performer who could throw a double somersault was looked on as a wonder. The writer, some thirty-three years ago, saw Tomkinson, a famous British clown and acrobat, execute this feat in Franconi's circus, then stationed for the season at Edinburg, Scotland. It was the same Franconi who afterward managed the hippodrome in New York in 1863–4, and the company was booked as first-class in every respect. The double somersault was performed by Tomkinson at his benefit, and the announcement of the then great feat packed the wooden building to suffocation. When the ring-master had made the preliminary speech, and Tomkinson retired up the steep incline which terminated in the spring-board, every heart stood still. A quick, impetuous rush down the board, a bound high in the air, a slow revolution and the gymnast descended nearly to the ground. It seemed impossible to do it, but in the last six feet the curled up body turned once more, and Tomkinson alighted on the big, soft mattress on his feet, but staggering. He was prevented from falling by the ring-master, and as he turned to go inside, Franconi, the enthusiastic French manager, patted him warmly on the back, amid the applause of the vast audience. It was a rare feat in those days. Tomkinson and the few other British double somersault performers did it only at infrequent intervals.

In this country Costella, a noted circus leaper, made it more difficult by clearing a number of horses at the same time. But soon a number of acrobats were able to follow his example, and even excel him in height and distance. Nowadays a circus acrobat who cannot do a double somersault is not considered anything but an ordinary performer unless he can do other sensational and original feats. Last year Barnum had a corps of acrobats, of whom seven performed double somersaults every night during the season. John Robinson has five men who can do it. The most surprising and unexcelled feat of double somersault throwing was that of the Garnella Brothers, who performed it in variety halls and circuses a few years ago. Standing on his brother's shoulders the younger Garnella sprang up and revolved twice, landing again on the shoulders. When it is considered that the double somersault by other performers is accomplished by a short spurt, a spring-board, and no restriction as to the spot of alighting, the feat of young Garnella must be classed among the unprecedented marvels of the acrobatic art.

The triple somersault is a dream of every young and ambitious acrobat. It requires phenomenal dexterity of body, and is known to be so dangerous that few have even attempted it. Fame and fortune awaits any performer who can do it, say twenty times in one tenting season. Were it not that circus managers know that the feat, or even the attempt, if repeated a limited number of times, will certainly result in a broken neck, they could well afford to pay the performer $10,000 to $20,000 for a season; and were it not, too, a proven fact, it would seem that the laws of gravitation and the limitations of physical dexterity forbade the turning of a triple somersault except by accident. In turning a double somersault off a spring-board, it is necessary to make a leap at an angle of about thirty degrees to obtain the necessary "ballast" or impetus to turn twice. If an almost perpendicular leap is made, the leaper would not have leverage enough to turn. In order to make the double somersault the performer has to leap from the spring-board with all his might to get the proper angle as well as to attain a sufficient height, so that he may have time to turn twice over before alighting. The same conditions govern the triple somersault, only it is necessary to go about one-third higher into the air.

An American named Turner accomplished a triple somersault once in this country and again in England. He tried it a third time and broke his neck. It is claimed that with this exception and the exception of Bob Stickney, of John Robinson's show, and Sam Reinhardt, an ex-leaper, no acrobat has been successful. The skeptic may say triple somersaults may be accomplished by the aid of higher and more powerful spring-boards than those in use, but that would merely change the angle, and the result would be the same. Of course the board could be placed high enough, but the specific gravity of the performer's body would be increased while descending. The height is not the only trouble. If it was only height, such men as Stickney, Batchellor, Gardner and one or two others, by improved appliances and practice would overcome that difficulty. But after the double somersault is accomplished and the performer is ready to turn again, he "loses his catch" or the control of his body, and is governed in his descent by gravitation alone. His head being heavier than his feet, he is very apt to light on it first and break his neck.

The first recorded attempt to throw a triple somersault in this country was made by a performer in Van Amburgh's circus at Mobile, Alabama, in 1842. He broke his neck. Another attempt was made in London, England, in 1846. It was made in Astley's amphitheatre, then leased to Howe & Cushing, the American managers. In this company was M. J. Lipman, a fine vaulter, Levi J. North, now in Brooklyn, New York, a famous equestrian; the late William O. Dale, a native of Cincinnati, who died here, blind and broken down, and who was an acrobat and equestrian of great reputation, and Wm. J. Hobbes, a fine leaper. It was previously announced that Hobbes would attempt a triple somersault, and the house was jammed. He tried it, and was instantly killed. The next to try it was John Amor, who was born under the roof of Dan Rice's father's domicile, near Girard, Pennsylvania. Amor travelled for years in this country with Dan Rice's circus, and in that day was considered the greatest gymnast in America, if not in the world. He is said to be the first performer in America to turn a double somersault over four horses. In 1859 he went to England and travelled with a circus all through the united kingdom. In the same year he attempted to turn a triple somersault at the Isle of Wight, but landed on his forehead and broke his neck.

Billy Dutton, it is said, performed the great feat while a member of Lake's circus, at Elkhorn, Illinois, in 1860, at a rehearsal, in the presence of John Lawton, the famous clown, now with Robinson's circus. Dutton was ambitious to have it to say he did it, and did not make the attempt with the intention of repeating it. He made the leap from a high spring-board. Dutton said then he would not try it again, and that his lighting upon his feet was an accident, as he could not control his body after turning the second time. Frank Starks, who was well known in Cincinnati, undertook the feat at the fair grounds in Indianapolis in 1870, for a wager of $100. In the first attempt he turned three times, but alighted in a sitting posture. Every one was satisfied with the result, and the money was tendered him. He proudly refused it, saying he would repeat it, and light upon his feet before he felt sufficiently justified in taking the $100. He did repeat it, but struck on his head, dislocating his neck, and death resulted a few hours afterward. Bob Stickney accomplished the great feat when fourteen years of age, while practising in a gymnasium on Fourteenth Street, New York. William Stein, an attache of Robinson's circus, was one of the persons who held the blanket for him to alight upon. Stickney says he believes he could do it again, but would not attempt it for less than $10,000, being fully convinced that the chances for his final exit from the arena would be good on that occasion. Sam Reinhardt, a former leaper, now a saloon-keeper at Columbus, when with the Cooper & Bailey Circus at Toledo, in 1860, not being satisfied with turning double somersaults, tried to add another revolution. He turned twice and a half, alighting on the broad of his back, and was disabled for a short period. The fact that a triple somersault was ever accomplished before a circus audience, after due announcement, and under the same conditions as double somersaults are performed—namely, landing on a mattress—may be seriously doubted. The best informed circus men say that it cannot be done with anything even like comparative safety except in the sheets, a blanket held by a number of men being used to catch the alighting performer. It is claimed, also, that it has never been accomplished except in that way.

BICYCLE RIDING EXTRAORDINARY.

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CHAPTER XLIII.
AN ADVENTURE WITH GIANTS.

I was in the office of the old Evening Post, at St. Louis one afternoon in 1879, when it was invaded by Capt. M. Y. Bates and wife, the tallest married couple in the world. They were travelling with Cole's circus, and by invitation of the managing editor, who wanted them interviewed, they visited the newspaper office. A very small reporter had been assigned to do the talking, and he waited patiently around the establishment until a carriage drove up to the door and a shout went up, "Here they come," at the sound of which the interviewer hurriedly made for the waste-basket which was under the table. Whether the giant and giantess saw the diminutive reporter or not they kept on coming in, and the scribe saw no other way out of it than to dive into the ample recesses of the basket, and nestle upon a bed of school-girl poetry, statesmen's essays, and applications from last year's and the coming year's college graduates, for managing editorship. There is a barbaric sesquepedalianism (which is a good long word to ring into a chapter about six-storied people) and a prevailing atmosphere of suffocation in such a waste-basket; nevertheless, the tiny reporter crouched closer as the Brobdignaggian people approached with a rabble that noised their heels upon the floor, their tongues against the roofs of their mouths, and that made things look and sound as if all the quarreling powers of Europe had set their combined forces down in the Evening Post office for the special purpose of driving the senses of its whole staff out through the top of the building. But all this was seraphic bliss compared with the awful moment when the giant captain deliberately sat down on the table just over the waste-basket. It would take a million horse-power jackscrew, I should think, to raise the fallen hopes of the reporter just then. A man stands some chance if a custom-house falls on him hurriedly, but chance crushed to earth never rises again, when a giant like this is threatening to make any easy-chair out of him. I suppose nearly everybody has heard the funny story about the fat woman and the living skeleton, in a New York museum, who fell in love with each other. They got along very nicely for a while, and were as affectionate as if the two had pooled their issues of flesh, blood, and bone, and divided up so that each tipped the scale at two hundred and sixty pounds, instead of the whale-like spouse tipping the scale at four hundred and ninety, while the skeleton husband did not need any more than a thirty-pound section of the beam to balance his weight. They were as happy as the sweetest of the singing birds until one day the husband allowed his heart to stray off to the Circassian girl, who had been originally born in Ireland, but had her hair curled for a short side-show engagement. Mr. Skeleton was making the weightiest kind of love to the fair Circassian for probably a month before the fat woman was made aware of the fact. Then the monster that is usually represented as green-eyed, took possession of her. She kept a careful vigil of all "Skin-and-bones'" doings, as she called him, until one day she found him during the noon hour, with his lean arms around the Circassian girl's neck, and his thin lips glued to her pouting labials of cherry-red. It is impossible to describe the terrible manner in which she swooped down upon Mr. Skeleton. It was enough to say that she covered space with alarming rapidity, and taking her thirty-pound husband by the back of the neck, shook an Irish jig out of his rattling bones, after which she threw him on the floor and deliberately sat upon him. The vivacious showman who told this story said a millstone could not have made a nicer sheet of wall-paper out of the living skeleton, had one fallen on him, and only for the buttons on his vest he could have been pushed through the crack under the door, after the fat woman got through with him. But to come back to Capt. Bates, the table upon which he had seated himself groaned, and the little reporter moaned. The fleeting seconds were magnified into centuries, and the man in the waste-basket afterwards told me that he felt himself shrinking into something like a homœopathic pill. The table, however, appeared to stand the pressure a great deal better than the person under it, and it was sometime before the latter came to reconcile himself to the safety of his situation. When he did so he peeped out.

The sight that met his gaze was a curious one. There was the great towering giantess, of pleasing features and with nothing of a "fee-fo-fum" air about her, quietly seated in the editor's chair, taking in the situation as if she had been accustomed to the thing since Adam's father was bald-headed. And there were the editors and news-hunters gazing on admiringly, with one or two of them particularly awe-stricken and wild-eyed. But the background was the thing. It was a circus in itself. At the doors and windows, upon tables and chairs, and perched further up on the top of an inoffensive and weak partition, as high as the giant himself, was a ghastly array of gaping mouths and bursting eyes in a setting of eager and dirty faces,—inside and out, high and low, anywhere and everywhere around the institution within seeing distance were newsboys and boot-blacks till one couldn't rest; with a dim and distant horizon of more respectable visitors who had been tempted in by the unusual scene and noise. After the usual courtesies had been interchanged, the editor remarked:—

"I had a young fellow assigned to interview you, Captain, but I don't know where he is just now."

"Perhaps he's gone to git an extension ladder," suggested a forward newsboy.

"No, Skinny," said another; "he told me he was going to get old Stout's balloon."

At this moment there was a commotion under the table. The giant's foot had swung back and collided with the waste-basket. To say it was a big foot would be like calling the pyramid of Cheops a brick-bat or the Colossus of Rhodes an Italian plaster-cast. They say Chicago girls have big feet; I don't know this to be a fact, but if they have anything like the pedal spread of Captain Bates they are entitled to the credit generally given them of greatness in this way. At any rate the collision between the foot and the basket caused the recondite reporter to disclose his whereabouts. The managing editor qualified his conduct as unbecoming a newspaper man, and the giant himself gently requested the scribe to come forward.

"You won't make a watch-charm out of me?" queried the reporter, apprehensively.

"No, no," the giant answered, in an assuring tone.

"Nor a scarf-pin?"

The giant said he wouldn't.

This allayed the reporter's fears, and he came forward from the atmosphere of "respectfully declined" literature in which he had been. Capt. Bates's greeting was most kind, and so was that of his wife. The reporter saw at once there had been no necessity for his previous timidity, and managing to get within a couple of yards of the giant's ear, he excused his awkward and silly actions. A pleasant chat followed, in which the giant and giantess gave brief outlines of their personal history.

Capt. Bates is now (1879) thirty-five years of age, stands seven feet eleven and one-half inches in height, and weighs about four hundred and eighty pounds. He is well put together, handsome in features, genial in speech, and has the reputation of being a sharp, shrewd man of the world. Mrs. Bates is thirty-two years old, of the same height as her husband, although she really seems to be taller, and turns the scales at about four hundred and twenty pounds. She is thinner in form, but of excellent physique, is handsome, and has the same frank and smiling expression on her face as that constantly worn by her husband. She says she likes the show business, because it brings her in contact with so many persons. The Captain, though, having been in it about twelve years, and accumulated considerable means, does not care much about parading his colossal proportions before the public. It has been his desire of late years to live in private, quietly on his farm in Ohio, where the couple have a house built expressly for them, with doors, windows, furniture, etc., on a giant scale; but until this year they received so many handsome offers that they forsook the sod for the sawdust, and the plow for the platform. In 1880, I think it was, a giant child was born to this enormous couple. The infant weighed twenty-eight pounds at birth.

After listening patiently to the Captain and his wife as they spoke of themselves, the little reporter whom I have introduced the reader to already, suggested as he nearly dislocated his neck in looking up at the lofty couple, that it would have been a nice thing to be around when they were making love to each other, but Mrs. Bates said that was rather a delicate matter to call up, and the reporter subsided. I could not help thinking, however, that a fellow must feel awful queer with four hundred and odd pounds of sweetheart upon his knee. Himalayan hugging going on all the time, and love-sighs that needed a Jacob's ladder to come from the heart-depths playing above his head like mountain zephyrs around the Pike's Peak signal service station. And then when a fellow felt his love away down in his boots, what an Atlantic cable job it must have been to find out exactly where it was! And the old garden gate, how it must have been like the gates that brave Samson shouldered with probably a little extra bracing to it. And what chewing-gum swopping must have gone on, and ice cream eating, perhaps a plate as large as a Northland jokel at a time, and no two spoons in it, either? Oh, but it must have been a heavenly thing!

"You weren't afraid of her big brother, Captain, were you?" friendly interrogated the reporter.

"Oh, no; not at all," answered the Captain.

"If you sat down on him once you could have sold him for a bundle of tissue paper, couldn't you?"

"That is not it, my boy," said the Captain. "She didn't have any big brother."

"Oh, yes, I see."

Then the discourse turned into other channels, intended to be of special interest to splacmucks—as the Brobdignaggians called ordinary mortals—who are contemplating marriage with giantesses.

"I suppose Mrs. Bates does not wield an ordinary rolling-pin?" the reporter half queried, addressing himself to Capt. Bates.

"No, indeed," the lady herself replied, laughingly. "I have one made expressly for my own use, from one of the largest of the Yosemite Valley trees."

"And you lay it on the old man now and then?" the reporter asked.

"I can answer for that," put in the Captain. "She sometimes brings it down so heavily on the rear elevation of my skull that it feels as if I had run against a pile-driver on a drunk or lost my way under the hammers of a quartz mill."

Mrs. Bates certainly had the physical strength to make a rolling-pin dance a lively jig in any direction, and if the weapon is anything at all like what it is here represented to be, Thor's celebrated hammer will have to go to the hospital as a weak and debilitated concern until the giants lay their domestic difficulties aside and retire permanently from active service.

"It must be a gigantic thing when the Captain comes home late at night, from the lodge, you know, falls through the kitchen window into a pan of dishes, and after stumbling up stairs goes to bed with his boots on?" the reporter insinuated, as he looked sorrowfully at the giantess.

"Oh, he never does that," said the lady; and after a minute she added, "and he'd better not."

The giantess looked knowingly at the giant who looked down at the floor. My thoughts wreathed themselves fondly around the Yosemite-tree rolling-pin, and I guess Capt. Bates's thoughts were turned in the same direction.

"Nobody ever dares to write billet-doux to Mrs. Bates," said the reporter. "I suppose you know circus and theatrical people are subject to that sort of thing."

"Not any body that I know of," the Captain answered.

"And I suppose if anybody did they wouldn't care about having you know it, either?" said the little Evening Post man.

GIANTESS.

GIANT.

The Captain made no reply, but a mysterious kind of look crowded into his eyes, and if anybody around the newspaper office had dared to entertain a spark of affection for the giantess he could see at once that he didn't stand the ghost of a show while the giant was around.

"Now, Captain," the tiny and timid reporter remarked, moving to a distance, "I know you like travelling, and I have one more question I would like to ask you. It is about hotel accommodations. Don't you occasionally have to hang your head or feet over the ends of the beds you encounter?"

This question disgusted the Captain and he rose from the table indignantly, as did Mrs. Bates from the editorial chair, and doubling themselves up as they reached the doorway they majestically swept out of the newspaper office, and stepping into their carriage were driven away.

Another notable giant is Colonel Routh Goshan, who was born in the city of Jerusalem, on the 5th day of May, '37, of Arabian parents. He is the youngest of a family of 15 children, who like himself, father and mother were all giants. He served with distinction in the Crimean war, and afterwards in the Mexican army.

Colonel Goshen stands 7 feet 11 inches in his stocking feet, and measures 75 inches around the chest, 25 inches around the arm, and wears a No. 11 shoe. His weight is 666 pounds.

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CHAPTER XLIV.
THE "TATTOOED TWINS."

Wanted—The address of some one who can tattoo with Indian ink on the person. A. J. H., No. —, —th Street.

This advertisement appeared in a St. Louis Sunday morning paper. The number and the street are not given for reasons that will at once present themselves to every intelligent reader. Now there is sometimes that in an advertisement which attracts one like a pretty girl. A few lines may furnish a neat little intellectual flirtation, and very frequently can, like a coy and pretty maiden, keep coaxing a fellow along until he is perfectly lost in the maze of an affection that he has neither the tact nor the willingness to try to escape from. As soon as my eyes lit upon them and the words from the capital W in the beginning to the period at the end were taken in, I was irrevocably gone on them. Like the immortal J. N., I immediately lifted the veil and looked at the suppositious sanctuary behind it, and then saw that walking art gallery, Capt. Costentenus—known to thousands of people who saw him travelling as the tattooed man—lying bound hand and foot upon the earth and surrounded by half a dozen Chinese Tartars, who were industriously pricking him with pointed instruments, which were ever and anon dipped into the little basins of blackish-blue liquid. The scene changed suddenly into a room at No. —, —th Street, and the Tartars were metamorphosed into a single individual of a decidedly Caucasian aspect, but with features wrought in that indistinctness which very frequently is characteristic of the shapes and forms seen in waking dreams, and the Greek Captain was replaced by an equally Caucasian subject, who was quietly undergoing the operations of having his breast tattooed in the most lavish and picturesque manner that the artist knew how. This idea fastened itself in my mind to such an extraordinary extent that merely for the purpose of gratifying a certain instinctive curiosity, as well as to see if my suppositions were correct, I called at the house indicated next afternoon.

It was a large three-story boarding-house in a very quiet part of the city, and situated romantically enough to lend the coloring of fact to the picture I had previously conjured up of the surroundings of the gentleman who wanted to be tattooed.

A young girl opened the door, who knew nothing of the person who owned the initials that appeared in the advertisement. I explained that this was the number and street—it was certainly the right house—and couldn't she recollect some name that began with an H. No, she could not. She did not think there was any gentleman boarding in the house whose name began with an H, and then she recollected that there had come to the house a few days before a man whose name she did not know. She would call her mother. "Ma! oh, ma!" rang down through the hallway, and around behind the staircase, and down into the dining-room, and up came the assuring response, "I'll be there in a minute." Enter the landlady with a wet towel on her head, and wiping her fingers on the corner of her apron. In answer to the daughter's query as to what the "new gentleman's" name was, she replied, as if she had known him since the corner-stone of Cheops was laid, that he was Mr. Henneberry. Was he in? No, not just then, but he would be back in time for dinner, which would be spread in about half an hour. Somewhat disappointed I replied that I would take a walk around and call at the end of the half hour, and was about to leave the door when a voice was heard on the upper landing, and the words "Hold on!" shouted in a very peremptory manner brought me to a halt. It was Mr. Henneberry, as I soon ascertained, when a tall, stout, well-proportioned gentleman, of handsome features and the prettiest black hair my eyes ever gazed upon, came down, introduced himself, and invited me in. The object of the visit was explained in a few words.

"Well," said Mr. Henneberry, "I've been just talking to a gentleman up in my room, an old sailor, who was crippled some years ago, by falling from the spar of a South American sailer, so he says, and who appears to be pretty expert. I rather like the man, and I think he will about suit me. He needs money, what you don't appear to do, and I think he is just the very man for what I want. So you see, I think you're a little late."

I expressed my regret at not having seen the advertisement earlier.

"You see," continued Mr. Henneberry, "I want somebody who will stay in the house here, and be available at all times during the day. It's a pretty long job—" and here he checked himself. "No, I don't mean a long job, because there ain't much of it, but what there is has got to be done neat and right up to the handle. What sort of work can you do?"

I bared my arm and exhibited a large death-head and cross-bones, an American eagle, and a bust of George Washington, which I had tattooed into me, when young and fond and foolish, by a Greek sailor I met in Milwaukee.

"That's pretty good," said Henneberry. "Where did you learn the business—if I might call it a business?"

Here I explained that an old sail-maker had taught me the art and that, having acquired the modus operandi of pricking the color into the flesh, I was perfectly at home in the business, as I was also an experienced sketcher.

Further talk followed, in which Mr. Henneberry spoke of tattooing generally, but made no allusion to the person to be tattooed nor the extent of the work to be done. At last, as he rose from his chair, as a gentle reminder that he had said about all he wanted to say, remarked that I might call again, as he had yet made no definite arrangement with the man up-stairs and probably would need two.

I went off chagrined, and wished that the old salt with the broken leg, who had gotten in ahead of me had broken his neck when he fell from the spar of that South American sailer. I left the door whistling, "We Parted by the River Side."

A saunter into a shady spot at a safe distance from the house, and a mind made up to await the outcoming of the successful rival, were the results of a sudden inspiration. An hour passed, a half more, three quarters, and it was just about an even couple of hours when out from the door of No. —, —th Street, limped a middle-aged, bent man, and he came directly towards me. He passed me by, for about half a block, when I caught up, and introduced the opening wedge of conversation by remarking that the weather was a little cooler than folks around there had been used to for the past month or so.

"Well, yes," was the reply, "but I don't mind it so much. You see I've hove to in hotter ports than this'll ever be. That sunstroke period was Injun summer compared with the brimstun climate I've pulled through. I've been along the African coast when it was hot enough to make a mill-stun sweat. If they could have just shipped that weather North it would thaw the North Pole into hot water inside of fifteen minutes."

And then the crippled sailor told of other experiences in other warm climates, and we talked on in an easy, friendly way for three or four blocks, when my companion remarked that he was going to take the cars. I said I was going to do the same, and as soon as we were seated on the shady side of the conveyance I remarked in a careless, off-hand way:—

"You got ahead of me in that job down at Henneberry's, old man."

He opened his eyes, looked at me half suspiciously, and said: "Then you're the young man the gentleman was talking about to me. You went to see him, this afternoon?"

An affirmative was the answer.

"Well, you needn't be so put out. He ain't engaged nobody yet. At least he ain't closed with me. You see, he's a bit scary. Didn't he tell you what he wanted?"

"Yes. At least, he left me to infer that he wanted either himself or somebody else tattooed."

"All over?"

"I thought that was what he meant."

"Well, blast his jib! He made me make all sorts o' promises not to open my port-hole about it."

"It is a very funny project, isn't it?" asked the reporter.

"Oh, no, not at all. I've been at it afore. I worked at a man up in Canada for about three months and got him nigh half done, when he died."

"It's a pretty dangerous operation, this tattooing?" was the next gentle insinuation.

"Yes, sometimes. But Henneberry can stand it. He looks as if he had the constitution and he appears to be reckless of the consequences. He wants to be a show-fellow. He's struck on it, just the same as that Canada chap who kicked. He's got an idea that there's money in it, and he's always talkin' about that Grecian chap as is with the circuses, you know."

"How long will it take to do the job?"

"Well, that I don't exactly know. He talks of havin' two of us at it. Maybe you're the other fellow, and he's in a stormy hurry about havin' it finished up, and wants a fellow to stay in the house with him all the time so that he can take his tattooing just when he feels like it. Are you good in drawin' dragoons, flyin' fish, elephants, boey constrictors and sich, young man?"

I replied that I was an adept in delineating animals of the sort named.

"Then I guess he'll want you. I used to be a pretty good drawer myself afore I fell from that South American, but my hand shakes no little now; but you just lay the lines, and if I don't stick 'em in as clean as a copper plate, my name ain't Jack Hogan."

"What will he pay for the job?"

"Well, I asked $600 calc'latin' six months would do it, but he brought me down to $450 and will pay my board and lodgin'. That ain't bad."

The reporter coincided with Jack Hogan that it appeared to be a pretty good thing.

"And you don't git your money down either. He wants to be fixed up from the soles of his feet to near his shirt collar and wristbands, in the house where he is now, and then he's goin' off to some quiet spot and have his face and hands and even his ears and the top of his head, for he's partly bald, done up in some place in the country, or may be out in some of the Pacific islands, and if it's a bargain between us I'll have to go with him."

"What catches me," said I, as we got up to leave the car, "is what Henneberry will do with himself when the finishing touches are all put on him."

"I can't say, but I s'pose he'll go off to the Sandwich Islands, marry a nigger squaw, or something of that sort, and come back with a cock-and-bull story about being captured by savages, and then swing 'round the circle with some circus or other. He's got the money to push the thing through, and I believe he can stand it. Maybe he'll travel with old Cos'tenus, and they'll call themselves the tattooed twins."

And the old fellow laughed heartily as he got down carefully from the platform of the car, and limped away towards the river—perhaps down to the Bethel Home on the levee.

The foregoing story may be regarded as quite a valuable clue when associated with a piece of information furnished by an Albany, New York, journal, whose reporter says the work on Capt. Costentenus's body pales when compared with that shown by a young man who stopped over in Albany one evening last summer on his way from Saratoga to his home in Syracuse. His name is Henry Frumell, and he is but twenty-three years of age. Although so young, he has, according to his own story, seen considerable of life. In 1876 he ran away from home, shipped on a merchant vessel which was trading among the Washington Islands in South Pacific. While there he underwent the tattooing process, which he described as the most painful torture ever endured.

"How was it done, and by whom?" he was asked by a reporter.

"By the natives, and with six needles fastened to a stick. Do you see them (showing the backs of his hands and wrists)? There is a lady's face on one and a man's on the other. Vermilion red and indigo blue were used, being pricked in with the needles. Now you see that the work is executed just as neatly and perfectly as it could possibly be on the human skin. Well, it took weeks before the design was finished, and it had to be pricked over a number of times."

"It must have been painful."

"It was. But then I had no choice but to submit."

"Why, were you compelled to undergo the tattooing?"

"Hardly that, but it was wiser to do so."

"How could natives execute the work so perfectly?"

"They used designs given them by a sailor named John Wells, who belonged to an English vessel. Those on my wrist are not so perfect as on other portions of my body."

"Did they tattoo you all over?"

"All except a small portion of the left leg above the ankle."

The designs so ineffaceably worked into Frumell's skin are numerous and beautiful, and some of them so appropriate to the young man's nationality that it is difficult to imagine how a South Pacific savage, even with an English sailor for an advisor, should have selected such fitting pictures. On his back, extending from shoulder to shoulder, and from the nape of the neck downward was a spirited illustration of two ships in action. Below it is a snake with protruding fangs and a scroll with Paul Jones's motto, "Don't tread on me." On his breast is the national coat of arms worked on the breast of an American eagle with pinions outspread, and the national colors in its beak. This covers the entire breast from armpit to armpit, and from the throat downward. Both arms are literally covered with designs of beasts, birds, and flowers. The lower limbs are also ornamented, one with the "Crucifixion of Christ" and the other with the shamrock, harp of Erin, and other designs. Each kneecap looks like a full-blown rose, with its vivid coloring and almost perfect imitation of that flower. The remainder of his body is similarly decorated, over five months being occupied in the process, and considerable more time being occupied in healing. His skin has the feeling of the finest velvet, and he says that he does not experience any evil effects from the immense quantity of poisonous dye injected into the cuticle. He has tried to eradicate the designs on his hands by burning, but without avail.

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CHAPTER XLV.
IN THE MENAGERIE.

Before entering the menagerie let us look at the huge cannon standing here outside the dressing-tent. It looks like a ponderous affair, but investigation shows that it is made of wood. There is a latitudinal slit at the lower end and a lever. It requires an effort to push the lever back which indicates that there is a pretty strong spring in the bottom of the cannon. This is the piece of ordnance that Zazel is shot out of into a net some distance away. She lies on her back in the cannon, which is tilted to an angle of about forty-five degrees, assumes a rigid position, and at the word fire the lever is pulled back, the spring released, a pistol is fired, and while Zazel is coming through the air a little cloud of smoke rolls from the cannon's mouth and is swept away almost before she lands on her back in the net. Sig. Farini says Zazel is his daughter. Barnum says that when he was in London where Zazel was doing the cannon act, creating a great furore, the pretty little French girl came to him crying and asked to be taken away. She was only getting about six dollars a week for the perilous work she was doing and Farini was drawing a large salary out of which she got this pittance.

Sig. Farini also owns the Zulus that have appeared here. As their manager he is well paid for them, and as the Zulus sleep in the menagerie tent and have but few wants and he gives them about a dollar a day—so Barnum says—Cetawayo's subjects are a profitable investment for him. Zulu Charley on exhibition in New York gets the magnificent sum of one dollar a day for doing his native war-dance and standing fire under the numerous eyes that are leveled at him daily. There is a bit of romance about this black warrior. Among the crowds who thronged to see the antics of the Zulus at Bunnell's Dime Museum, New York City, last winter, was an Italian girl named Anita G. Corsini, eighteen years old, a music teacher by occupation, and the daughter of a Mr. Corsini who is in business in New York. Zulu Charley won her admiration and love, and she spent many quarters from her hard-earned savings to see the dusky object of her affections. Charlie did not repel her affections and they swore to be true to each other. Mr. Corsini, however, did not regard with favor the prospect of a marriage between his daughter and a negro, and did everything in his power to dissuade her from carrying out her intention. Last week, however, the couple eloped, but while on their way to a minister's house they were arrested at the instance of Anita's father.

When the case came up on the following morning in the Jefferson Market court the father wanted to have the girl sent to Blackwell's Island, but upon her promise to obey him and leave the Zulu he changed his mind and took her home. But she again met Charley and, accompanied by another Zulu named Usikali, and Charles Richards, a white man, they went to the residence of the Rev. R. O. Page, Brooklyn, and asked to be married. The minister consented, but he seems to have made a mistake, addressing all the questions to Usikali instead of to Charley, and then pronounced them man and wife. On learning his mistake, however, he performed another ceremony between the right parties. The newly married couple then went to the museum, where the bridegroom took part in the usual Zulu war-dance.

The tattooed Greek Costentenus with his picture-covered flesh is always an object of admiration to the ladies. He says he was tattooed into his present shape by Chinese Tartars and tells a harrowing story of his sufferings.

The torturing doesn't seem to have impaired his health or bothered his appetite any. He is a magnificent looking man physically and in his unstripped condition is a figure that the eye of an artist would delight to dwell upon. His only rival is a lady who is now on exhibition in England and whose breast and upper and lower limbs are covered with tattooing. I do not know her history, but she probably submitted to the process to make money out of it. Dr. Lacassagne, a French physician, has published a book on the habit of tattooing as practised in the French army. There are professional tattooers in Paris and Lyons who charge half a franc for each design. Generally the tattooer has cartoons on paper and reproduces these on the skin by a mechanical process. Large designs cost a good deal; a big representation of an Indian holding up the flag of the United States costs the decorated person fifteen francs. China ink is the coloring substance preferred, touched up with vermilion. Dr. Lacassagne has collected one thousand three hundred and thirty-three designs, tattooed on three hundred and seventy-eight members of the Second African Battalion or on men under arrest in military prisons. Many were tattooed on every part of the body except the inner side of the thighs. Patriotic and religious designs and inscriptions amounted to ninety-one. There were two hundred and eighty amorous and erotic devices and three hundred and forty-four works of pure fantasy, such as ladies driving in a carriage, the horses plunging and servants rushing to their heads. The great efforts of art are reserved for the surfaces of the breast and back. The subjects of many of the drawings are best left undescribed, the imagination of a dissipated soldier being quite savage in its purity. Among patriotic and religious emblems are cited two devils, nine theological virtues, six crucifixes, two sisters of charity, three heads of Prussians, not flattered, and five portraits of ideal girls of Alsace, with no fewer than thirty-four busts of the republic. Among animals the lion and the serpent are the favorite totems. Among flowers the pansy is generally preferred. The æsthetic classes will be grieved to hear that not a single lily appears, and there was only one daisy. Among mythological subjects the sirens are the greatest favorites; next comes Bacchus with his pards, Venus, Apollo and Cupid.

Gen. Tom Thumb and his agreeable little wife are once more swinging around the sawdust circle with their old friend Barnum. Gen. Thumb is the most successful dwarf the world has ever seen. He is rich and as happy as if he and his wife were as tall as Captain and Mrs. Bates, the giant and giantess whose immense forms loom up above the crowds that throng the menagerie tent. I have written elsewhere about captain and his wife.

"Tummy T'um is ze worst bluff at pokair I ever saw," said Campanini one day, in a confidential mood; "I ride wiz heem in sefenty-seex from Pittsburg to Veeling, and he loose me elefen dollars on a pair of deuces. Ze Generale is a bad man at ze national game."

Campanini, it is well known, is exceedingly economical, and the loss of eleven dollars he gulped down as well as he could, sinking it away below the region of his lower register. It was a misfortune he will never be able to forget entirely, but General Thomas Thumb is a perfect basilisk to the distinguished tenor. Whenever their shows exhibit in the same town the singer looks up the dwarf and challenges him to a game of chance. They last met in St. Louis, a short time before Campanini's departure for Europe, and oddly enough they settled on a game of billiards, although probably for prudential reasons on Campanini's part, as it was impossible for Tom Thumb to win such a disastrous sum as eleven dollars from the Italian at that manly game.

The game took place in the principal billiard-room of St. Louis, and it was rendered doubly interesting by the fact that Charles Mapleson, faultlessly attired, kept the talley. A great crowd was soon attracted into the room, and the only regret of the two distinguished players was that they had not charged a general admission, reserved seats extra.

As the game proceeded Campanini grew excited, and the sonorous notes of his full, rich voice resounded through the corridors of the great hotel. This, in turn, irritated the General, and his weak, piping tones, with a tinge of anger in them, contrasted strangely with the Italian's. The crowd laughed, and Campanini unconsciously exhibited some of the richest treasures of his stock-in-trade, while the General grew desperate and absolutely tried to reach across the table.

"Fefteen," shouted Campanini.

Failing in his first effort, the General again tried to accomplish the impossible.

"Fefteen," Campanini shouted once more.

Just then Charles stepped forward and offered to lift up little Hop-o' My Thumb.

"Who is playing this game, anyhow?" the General fiercely demanded.

"Fefteen," again shouted Campanini.

"That makes three times the bloody Italian has said 'fefteen,'" Thumb remarked, regaining his lost temper, and then to Campanini's dismay he proceeded leisurely to win the game.

"Elefen dollars at pokair, twenty-five cents at billiards—elefen twenty-five," the tenor kept muttering during the rest of the day, and that night at the opera Col. Mapleson could not understand why Campanini was so hoarse.

The "Wild Ape of Borneo" seems to be quite an intelligent animal and displays first-rate taste in choosing his company. He has learned by experience that girls were made to be hugged and kissed. Through the bars of his cage he has seen many a rural lass's waist in the power of a plough-boy's arm, and watched their lips meet in a smack that more than discounted the old minstrel joke about the sound resembling the noise made by a cow pulling her hoof out of the mud. It was no wonder, then, that when the "wild ape" got out of his cage, while the circus was exhibiting down South, he forgot all his Borneo breeding, and made a rush for one of the prettiest girls under the flapping canvas. He got one arm around her neck and with the paw that was free caught her chignon and made a desperate effort to obtain a kiss. The girl's escort was at first terrified and felt like climbing one of the quarter-poles, all the females in the neighborhood shrieked, and the males began to dive under their seats. At last a gentleman rushed up with drawn revolver and fired a shot close to the ape's ear, whereupon he at once abandoned his osculatory efforts, and made his escape.

PERFORMING ELEPHANTS.

A curiosity that has been before the public for almost twenty years is the "two-headed woman," Millie Christine. The fact of the matter is that there are two women joined together below the waist, but as they have a single physical organization their manager has seen fit to call them one. This freak of nature is more astonishing than were the Siamese twins or the Hungarian sisters. The two-headed woman was born of slave parents on the plantation of Alexander McCoy near the town of Whiteville, Columbus County, North Carolina, on July 11, 1851. Prior to this Millie Christine's mother had given birth to five boys and two girls, all of ordinary size and without deformity. The "two-headed woman" will be best understood by reading an extract from a lecture by Prof. Pancoast of the Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia. The Professor examined this curiosity and discussed upon the subject before a large gathering of medical men. In introducing Millie and Christine, he said he considered them the most interesting monstrosity of their class that has ever come under the notice of scientific men, far more interesting than the Siamese twins. In the midst of his discourse the young ladies entered, clad in green silk on their two bodies, pretty little bronze boots on their four feet, white kids on their four hands. They moved forward like an expanded V, with a crab-like movement that was not ungraceful. Born back-to-back; the Professor explained that the natural desire of each to walk face forward had twisted them in their present position. Separate entities, separate individualities, each can pursue separate lines of thought and conversation independent of the other. From habit their appetites call for food and drink at the same time. All the ills of flesh are not, however, necessarily theirs in common. One may have the toothache and the other be free from any ache. But in the examination conducted to-day the Professor discovered a remarkable development of sensibility since his previous examination, eight years ago. Touching them on any extreme of the body, on any foot, for example, both in common were conscious of the touch. Christine has been and is now the larger and stronger of the two. As children they used to have little struggles and quarrels for supremacy, but, as they could not get away from each other, they early concluded that the best way to get along in their novel path through life was to yield to each other. Their present happiness and affection for each other is an example for couples who are yoked together in marital bonds. Sometimes Christine rolls over Millie in bed without awakening her. Both can sleep separately. They can stand and walk on their outside legs, but they prefer to walk on all fours. Millie cannot lift up Christine's legs, or Christine Millie's legs. Since the Hungarian sisters, there has been no similar case reported reaching adult life for one hundred and seventy years. The bond of union between these, which is just above the bones of the spine, is chiefly cartilaginous, but the spines are so closely approximated that there is an osseous union between them. To the question by Professor Pancoast, whether either was engaged to be married, each denied the soft impeachment with decision, though the Professor explained that physically there are no serious objections to the marriage of Her or Them; but morally there was a most decided one. During the Professor's lecture the Misses Christine Millie and Millie Christine appeared very much interested in the diagnosis of their singular condition and evidenced their superior intelligence by their apt and ready answers.

JUMBO.

Turning from the human to the zoological branch of the exhibition, we find the usual assortment of animals from the monkey up to Jumbo, the elephant, who is only one of a dozen in the possession of his owner. All performing elephants are well trained, and there is scarcely one that cannot figure in the ring, responding to the good advice of the trainer, as the keepers often style themselves. The monkeys are always a source of amusement, and never loose their drawing power. They are intelligent animals, but the inclination they have for mischief makes them quite dangerous. They tell a funny story about an actor out West who had a pet monkey that he carried with him wherever he went, even to the theatre. Jocko appeared to be perfectly harmless, and as he had been at the theatre night after night without making trouble, his master never dreamed that he would do anything out of the way. Imagine his surprise therefore when one night as he was in the midst of a comedy part down came Jocko from the "flies" with a false face he had filched out of the property-room. His appearance brought down the house and the play was spoiled.

A traveller in Japan writing about the amusements there tells us of a very remarkable Sigmian specimen. He says: "There is an unpretentious show, costing one cent to witness, that is full of interest to those who have leanings toward Darwin's theory of the origin of mankind. It has a trained monkey of no mean attainments. The creature stands upright about three feet high, a well-developed and intellectual-looking monkey, which will go through all the posturing known to the famous India-rubber man, and some that that famous individual could not throw himself into, but the crowning feat that he has been taught is to dance the Japanese dance to perfection, taking the exact step, having the correct sway of the body, keeping time faultlessly, and using his arms and hands in exact accord with the movements of the feet. It is difficult to realize that a dumb brute can be educated as completely as this creature is. Oscar Wilde and this monkey would make a strong partnership in the platform business, for the monkey is certainly an æsthete—"a darling and a daisy."

If any reader wants to buy a menagerie he can obtain his curiosities from dealers in New York or Europe. He must have plenty of money though, as the prices of animals range high, as will be seen in the following figures: An elephant may be had for $16,000; lion and lioness with cage, $9,000; sea cow, $8,000; pair of large leopards and two smaller ditto, $5,000; Australian kangaroo, $2,000; Australian wombat, $12,000; ostrich, $1,000; royal tiger, $5,000; sacred camel, $2,000; rare birds, monkeys and lesser animals, including those of American nativity, $20,000; total, $60,000.

Among the rarest animals, says a writer on this subject, are the hippopotamus and the gnu, or horned-horse. A first-class hippopotamus is worth five or six thousand dollars, an elephant from three to six thousand dollars, a giraffe is worth about three thousand dollars, a Bengal tiger or tigress will bring two thousand dollars, leopards vary from six to nine hundred dollars, a hyena is worth about five hundred dollars, while an ostrich rates at three hundred dollars. The price-list shows that, although expenses may be heavy, receipts are proportionately large, and that it does not require many large beasts to make a good business for one trader. A New York house in three years sold twenty lions, twelve elephants, six giraffes, four Bengal tigers, eight leopards, eight hyenas, twelve ostriches and two hippopotami, being a total business of about $112,000, or over $37,000 per annum, in the line of larger beasts alone, exclusive of the smaller show-beasts, such as monkeys, and exclusive also of birds, which latter items more than double the amount given. Gnus, or horned-horses, have come into great demand of late years, both from their oddity and rarity, and are valued at seventeen or eighteen hundred dollars apiece. An elephant is always in demand, and sells, whether it be male or female, large or small, "trick" or otherwise. Ostriches, though heavy eaters, are not very expensive, as they have cast-iron stomachs and digest stone, glass, iron, or almost anything else that one chooses to give them, though they are judges of good meat when they get it. They are not the only creatures that eat glass. Heller or Houdin—I forget which of these magicians—found a taste among Oriental jugglers for pounded glass, which they ate in large quantities. A trial by the Caucasian trickster developed the fact that glass was not only not injurious when taken in reasonable doses, but that it served as an appetizer, stimulating the stomach to hunger after food. There are two species of ostrich known to the trade, the black and the gray; both are very strong, fleet, and practically untamable. Lions, tigers and leopards form constituent attractions of almost all menageries, and are too familiar to need description. It may be here remembered, however, that people who deal with these creatures find that there is comparatively little danger to themselves to be dreaded from either lions or lionesses. These animals never attack any human being, save when excessively hungry; and when enraged, from any cause, always show such visible signs as put their keepers on their guard; whereas, the opposite of these statements is true in regard to tigers and leopards—the latter especially, which are regarded by those in the trade as the most dangerous, cruel and treacherous of all the beasts with which they are brought in contact. American lions or jaguars, and American or Brazilian tigers are very fierce, untamable and strong, although inferior in size to the lion or tiger proper. Of monkeys and baboons little more than has already been said need be repeated here. There are about one hundred and fifty different species of these creatures, the most intelligent of which is the ringtailed monkey, and the most stupid, that variety known as the lion monkey, from its being gifted, instead of brains, with a long mane. The variety of deer and antelope are numerous, and always find ready purchasers; the genuine antelope will bring two or three hundred dollars in the market.

A show of wild animals is one thing, and a very good thing sometimes; but the same number of wild beasts when not in show—but merely in winter quarters or out and awaiting sale, presents a different, and, sometimes, a curious spectacle. Thus in a certain back yard in the city of New York, as singular a sight is presented to the lover of animal life as is afforded probably in the range of the whole world. You enter by a low doorway, and at first glance you see only a number of boxes, with iron bars in front—amateur cages in fact—and arranged alongside of each other, just as cases may be, without the slightest order or general arrangement. If you look a second time at these boxes you will be made aware of the fact that they are inhabited by certain moving animals; for pairs of bright eyes will gleam out upon you through the iron bars and occasional switching of some beastly tails against the sides of the cages will become audible, as will every now and then a deep smothered roar. Inspecting the box-cages or cage-boxes, more closely you will see, further, that one of them contains a three-year old lion, just getting his young moustache, or, what answers the same purpose to a lion—his mane. Next box to this you will find a lioness, about the same age as her mate, a fine specimen of African female, who seems very much attached to a dog that shares her cage with her in perfect harmony, at least so far as the lioness is concerned, for she does all she can to live at peace with the dog, yielding to his wishes in all particulars, giving up her meat whenever he takes a fancy to it, and getting out of his way whenever he wishes to walk about, although doggy does not seem to be a very amiable partner, and every now and then gives the lioness a bit of his mind by biting her in the ear. A little beyond this strange couple lie two more boxes—the upper one containing a pair of young hunting leopards, as playful as young kittens, which spend their time in calling to the cats of the neighborhood, the lower one being the scene of the imprisonment of a full-grown, very handsome, very cross leopardess, who is always snarling and seeking whom or what she may devour. This latter beast has a special antipathy to a young lad who has charge of her, and tries half a dozen times a day to make mince-meat of him. On the opposite side are a number of boxes, containing monkeys of various species and baboons. One of these monkeys is a jovial female, christened Victoria, and is one of the most expert pickpockets in New York, which is saying a great deal. Vic can relieve a visitor of his watch and chain or pocket-book in a manner most refreshing to a monkey and moralist to witness, and although as ugly as sin is as quick as lightning. Next door to this kleptomaniac ape is a happy family of monkeys—father, mother and baby—who live together lively as clams at the turn of tide. On the ground, at a little distance, lies another box, which contains a monster baboon. This fellow is called Jonas, and is, without exception, the ugliest individual in existence to which the Almighty has ever given a shape—such as it is. These big apes are frequently palmed off on the public for gorillas; they are strong as giants, gentle as lambs, and can be taught tricks like dogs. As in the case of canines, severity and kindness are resorted to in training them. Prof. Harry Parker, in speaking to me about educating his dogs, said he rarely used the whip upon them, but endeavored, by properly feeding and speaking kind words to them, to make them obedient to his command, still the whip must be used. Dogs that hop around on two feet have their little limbs lashed from under them until they almost feel the sting of the rawhide in the tone of the trainer's voice. Clown dogs, which have recently been prominent features of circuses and variety shows, are taught to go through every article that is put down upon the floor by their masters; that is why they squirm through a hoop, run under and overturn chairs, pass under bundles and upset the leaping basket that is used in dog circuses. Prof. Parker and Prof. Willis Cobb, I may here remark, are the best dog-trainers in the country, and both have large and fine collections of educated canines.

In the rear portion of the yard which we have been visiting is an inclosure, in which three or four horned horses or ponies, called gnus, are digesting their rations; next to these is a case in which is confined a fretful porcupine, who shows his bristles on the least provocation, and sometimes when there is no insult meant at all. The catalogue of cages or boxes is completed by that in which is held in duress a Brazilian tiger of the fiercest possible description, who does nothing but glare upon you and want to eat you. The meat-eaters in the collection are fed only once a day—at noon—and cost about a dollar per day to feed; the fruit-eaters, like the elephant, eat all the time, as fancy prompts; while the vegetarians, like the monkeys, take their three square meals a day. As a rule, all animals enjoy a better average of health than man, because they have no acquired tastes or dissipated habits. The elephant lives for centuries; the parrot is a centenarian, while the lion lives but twenty years or so. On the whole, the average life of man is greater than that of the majority of the so-called beasts, though their average of health exceeds his.

Wax-works, of one kind or other, enter into the display made in the menagerie tent; but the figures all seem broken or enfeebled by long usage, and instead of being attractive, many of them are repulsive. How different from Madame Tussaud's exhibition—the prototype of all the efforts that have been made in the wax-work line! A correspondent who visited this display many years ago, when the display had a world-wide fame, wrote:—

"Madame Tussaud's famous exhibition of wax statuary and works in wax afforded me a very entertaining evening's occupation. Here are full-length portraits in wax of all the notables of the world; Queen Victoria, Prince Albert, the royal children, George III., Queen Charlotte, George IV., William IV., George II., Louis XIV., Emperor Louis Napoleon and his empress in their bridal costume, Henry VIII., Cardinal Wolsey, all the present sovereigns of Europe, Kossuth, Gen. Tom Thumb, etc., numbering nearly two hundred figures in all, so artistically arranged and so well executed that the effect upon the visitor on entering is the same as on coming into a grand drawing-room filled with noble ladies and gentlemen. So perfect is everything that you look to hear the figures speak, and can hardly convince yourself that they do not move.

"The second room of Madame Tussaud's exhibition is called the Robe Room, which contains the figure of George IV. wearing the order of the Garter. This robe was worn by his majesty in the procession to Westminster Abbey, at his coronation. To the right of this is the robe the same monarch wore at the opening of Parliament, and on the left the robe worn by the King in returning to Westminster Abbey after the coronation. The cost of these three robes was about $90,000. The third room of the exhibition is called the Golden Chamber, and contains relics of the Emperor Napoleon, among which is the camp bedstead used by Napoleon during his seven years at St. Helena, with the mattress and pillow on which he died; the coronation robe of Napoleon and the robe of the Empress Josephine; the celebrated flag of Elba; the sword worn by the Emperor during his campaign in Egypt, and many other relics of him. In another room is the carriage in which Napoleon made the campaign of Russia, and which was captured on the evening of the battle of Waterloo; also the carriage he used at St. Helena, in which, of course, I sat down, according to custom.

"In another room are many relics of the French Revolution, among which are the instruments by which the unfortunate Louis XIV. was beheaded, as also Robespierre and others. These are but a few of the many curious and interesting objects to be seen at this exceedingly entertaining exhibition; and I passed several hours here, quite lost in the examination of the collection and the recollections which the various articles awakened."

* * * * *

The menagerie, no matter how small or how extensive it may be, always has much within its cages and lying around under its canvas to interest young and old alike. It is like a volume of natural history that may be forever studied without exhausting the interest that attaches to it, and the knowledge contained in it. Thrown down after a single perusal, the book is picked up again and again, and each time its pictures and pages seem as fresh and entertaining as they were in the beginning. So, too, the collection of curiosities, that now-a-days form a very important part of every tent-show, never loses its attraction for the public. Gray-haired men who in boyhood looked, open-mouthed and astonished, into the den of lions, still find the same pleasure in contemplating these wonderful beasts from a safe distance, and take delight in making their children acquainted with them. The tangled forests and matted jungles of new regions are constantly giving up new specimens of wild animal life; and with the old reliable attractions still plentiful, and startling novelties occasionally coming to the surface, there is every reason to believe that the menagerie will retain its present hold upon the hearts of the people, and last as long as there is canvas in the world to cover one or color enough to fill an ordinary stand of bills.

Now we have seen about all there is to see. Passing out and by the side-show blower with his fat woman and lean man, his glass blower and Irish Circassian girls, his juggler, and the heartless band of music he has playing at one end of his dirty tent; we move down the street, the sound of the side-show music dies out, the canvas fades behind the house-tops, and we have left the show world with all its sunshine and shadow, its laughter and tears.

CURTAIN.

Transcriber's Notes

The original text contained many typographical errors, including missing periods and missing, unbalanced, or inconsistent single and double quotation marks. The Transcribers attempted to correct the simple ones, but many remain. Some of the more obvious unchanged errors are listed below.

Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed. Spelling and punctuation in passages containing dialect or French have not been changed.

Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained.

Repeatedly inconsistent hyphenation and spelling, such as "make up" and "make-up", "boquets" and "bouquets", and "fairy-land" and "fairyland", have been retained.

The Table of Contents and List of Illustrations refer to "Herman," while the referenced pages of text spell the name as "Hermann." They also do not hyphenate compound words that are hyphenated on the referenced pages. These differences have not been changed here.

Illustrations have been repositioned between paragraphs, so the page references in the List of Illustrations are only approximate in this eBook. In versions that support links, the links in that list lead directly to the corresponding illustrations.

Page [29]: "Obarammergan" was printed that way; today, the town's name is spelled "Oberammergau".

Page [45]: "—See p. 18." was printed at the bottom of the page in the area normally used for footnotes, but it has no footnote notation and is not referenced in the text. Page [18] contains an illustration captioned "STAGE OF A MODERN THEATRE." As the appropriate position of the reference could not be determined, it has been removed from the text but mentioned here.

Page [50]: "hair-brained" was printed that way.

Page [95]: Closing quotation mark added after "and look your part."

Page [130]: "pacing three time" was printed in the singular.

Page [132]: "Such an accident happened him" was printed that way.

Page [186]: "Every time the slits in the towel came opposite the slits in the canvas the light shines through and the silver dance upon the lake or river." was printed that way.

Page [186]: "outer ruin" was printed that way.

Page [269]: "D'Oyley Carte planks down $12,000" was printed that way.

Page [317]: "meets a night of the quill" may be a typographical error for "knight".

Page [347]: "too awfully too too for anything" was printed that way.

Page [353]: "café, which he run" was printed that way.

Page [391]: "palmy days" was printed that way.

Page [463]: "don't you forget it?" was printed with the question mark.

Page [477]: "At least she learned" was printed that way.

Page [531]: "The miner's, rugged and brown," was printed with the apostrophe.

Page [544]: "capacity for adopting oneself" was printed that way.

Page [561]: "so I gave up thar trial" was printed that way.

Page [564] (originally 565): The illustration lacks a caption, but in the List of Illustrations, it is "LEAPING".

Page [593]: "Bacchus with his pards, Venus" was printed that way.

Page [600]: "Sigmian specimen" was printed that way.