[Nothing but the tip ends of the editors' coat-tails could be seen when the showman concluded this speech.]
A smart-looking chap was doing a brisk business with a gambling contrivance. Seeing two policemen approach, he rapidly and ingeniously covered the dice up, mounted his table, and shouted:
"Ere's the only great show on the grounds! The highly trained and performing Mud Turtle with nine heads and seventeen tails, captured in a well-fortified hencoop, after a desperate struggle, in the lowlands of the Wabash!"
The facetious wretch escaped.
A grave, ministerial-looking and elderly man in a white choker had a gift-enterprise concern. "My friends," he solemnly said, "you will observe that this jewellery is elegant indeed, but I can afford to give it away, as I have a twin brother seven years older than I am, in New York City, who steals it a great deal faster than I can give it away. No blanks, my friends—all prizes—and only fifty cents a chance. I don't make anything myself, my friends—all I get goes to aid a sick woman—my aunt in the country, gentlemen—and besides I like to see folks enjoy themselves!"
The old scamp said all this with a perfectly grave countenance.
The man with the "wonderful calf with five legs and a huming head," and "the philosophical lung-tester," were there. Then there was the Flying Circus and any number of other ingenious contrivances to relieve young ladies and gentlemen from the rural districts of their spare change.
A young man was bitterly bewailing the loss of his watch, which had been cut from his pocket by some thief.
"You ain't smart," said a middle-aged individual in a dingy Kossuth hat with a feather in it, and who had a very you-can't-fool-me look. "I've been to the State Fair before, I want yer to understan, and knows my bizniss aboard a propeller. Here's MY money," he exultingly cried, slapping his pantaloons' pocket.
About half an hour after this we saw this smart individual rushing frantically around after a policeman. Somebody had adroitly relieved him of HIS money. In his search for a policeman he encountered the young man who wasn't smart.