I
WE VISIT A QUEER RESORT FOR CIRCUS PEOPLE AND TALK WITH A TRAINER OF ELEPHANTS
WELL down on Fourth Avenue, below the bird-fanciers, the rat-catchers, the antique-shops, and the dingy hotels where lion-tamers put up, is "Billy's" place, the great rendezvous of the country for circus folk, and here any afternoon or evening, especially in the dull winter-time, you may find heroes of the flying trapeze, bereft of show-ring trappings, playing monotonous euchre with keepers of the cages, or sitting in convivial and reminiscent groups that include everything from the high-salaried star down to some humble tooter in the band at present looking for a job. All kinds of acrobats come to "Billy's," all kinds of animal men, everybody who has to do with a show, barring the owners. If a Norwegian wrestler wants to get track of an Egyptian giant he goes to "Billy's." If an elephant-trainer needs a new helper he goes to "Billy's." It is at once a club, a haven, a post-office, and a general intelligence bureau for members of this wandering and fascinating profession.
It was my fortune recently to spend an evening at "Billy's," and I had as companion a veteran circus man, able to explain things. After taking in the externals, which were commonplace enough save for "big-top" celebrities ranged along the walls in tiers of photographs, we sat us down where a man in a blue shirt was telling how a lioness and three cubs got out of a cage somewhere one afternoon just after the performance. It seems one of the cubs had been playing with a loose bolt, and the first thing anybody knew, there they were, all four of them, skipping about free in the menagerie tent. The story detailed various efforts to get the lioness back into her cage—prodding, lassoing, shouting—and the total failure of these because she would neither leave her cubs nor let them be taken from her.
Finally, the situation grew serious, for the evening performance was coming on, and it was quite sure there would be no audience with an uncaged lioness on the premises. So it became a matter of business in this wise—a lioness worth a few hundred dollars against an audience worth a couple of thousand. Word was sent to the head of the show, and back came the order, "Kill her." In vain the keeper pleaded for one more trial; he would risk a hand-to-hand struggle with hot irons. The head of the show said, "No"; the lioness was desperate, and he wouldn't have his men expose their lives. It was a case of "Shoot her, and do it quick."
Of course, that settled it; they did shoot her, and as the blue-shirted man described the execution I was impressed by his tenderness in speaking of that poor, defiant mother, and then of the three little cubs that "howled for her a whole month, sir, and looked so sad it made us boys feel like murderers, blamed if it didn't!"
HOW THE LIONESS WAS CAPTURED ON THE OPEN PRAIRIE.