Watch Yourself Go By

by Al. G. Field

Win Scott was the door-keeper and treasurer. Lin had a wordy war with the treasurer soon after the doors opened. Willie Shuman, who was lame, wanted to sit on the treasurer's seat, a soap box near the main entrance. Win objected solely on the grounds that real shows did not permit patrons to sit where they pleased but made them stand around. Lin secured another soap box and Willie was given the kind of seat he desired "up high," as Lin expressed it, "so nobody could stan' in front of him."

Lin insisted on counting the receipts several times while the audience was assembling and when they reached sixty-eight cents, she concluded it was too much money to entrust to any one connected with the show. Emptying the pennies in her pocket, she pinned it up, remarking: "Ef there's no trouble comes up about them there new linen sheets, we'll give another show tonight. I hev all the lights hangin' in the cellar ready."

The ghost seen the night before had been the talk of the town and that it disappeared on the old commons near the tent was whispered about among those in attendance at Alfred's show. Lin heard whispers of the reports and somehow she could not entirely dispossess her mind of the idea that the new linen sheets were connected in some way with the ghosts. However, so deeply interested was she in the manifold duties she had imposed upon herself that ghosts and linen sheets were, for the time, forgotten.

Sitting on a soap box holding two children on her lap, so they could see it all, Lin was calling on Alfred to come back into the ring and repeat a twisting about trick he had just performed. Lin said the children wanted to see him do it "agin."

Encores were numerous from Lin, no matter whether the major portion of the audience desired them or not; if the children expressed a wish to see any feat repeated Lin simply commanded that it be done and if the performer hesitated to take a recall, Lin sat the children off her lap and marched the performer out and compelled him to comply with the children's wishes.

Although it was balmy spring, there was a tinge of chill in the air that touched one. Many of the boys were compelled to undress to don their costumes, and Joe Sandford's costume especially was not conducive to comfort and warmth.

Alfred had strongly impressed it upon all who participated in the performance that they must have real show clothes. Many and surprising were the costumes. Tom White's father had been a member of the Sons of Malta. Young White wore his father's regalia, a cross between the make-up of Captain Kidd and Rip Van Winkle.

Joe Sanford's costume made Alfred slightly jealous. Lin had trimmed the garments loaned Alfred by Mrs. Young. She had made him a body dress from an old patch quilt, the figures worked in yellow and red. Yet the colors were not as bright as those in the costume of Joe.

It was spring time, house-cleaning and wall-papering time. Mrs. Sanford, being of an inventive turn of mind, collected the wall paper scraps, particularly the red border paper. Fashioning a suit out of the paper, she pasted it together. The costume was after the style of Napoleon, as we have seen him in pictures. Joe was without clothing of any kind except the pasty wall paper suit, stripes on the trousers running up and down and on the jacket encircling. As Joe walked about the dressing room to keep warm the paper suit rustled and swished. He was the admiration of all the performers.

Although Joe was not to appear until later he insisted that he be permitted to perform his feats at once, that he was almost frozen. Lin was advised of this fact and said: "Oh, well, let him do his showin'. Ef he ketched cold he would hev the tisic, (phthysic)." Joe was subject to this affliction.