You’ve given yourself plenty of time, so you think. You want to see the menagerie and the lions and tigers and elephants, but the first thing you know, that sideshow spieler has inveigled you inside the tent and the next thing you know, somebody with a fog-horn voice is yelling in your ear:
“Hurry! Hurry Everaybodi-e-e-e-e-e-e! Th’ Beeg Show is Starting-g-g-g-g!”
Then you have to rush through the menagerie and get into your seat before you exactly know what’s happened.
Well, it’s about the same way with the beginning of a book. You set yourself to have a lot of fun seeing the main show, and then somebody drags you off to a side performance and before you realize it, your time for reading’s up and all you’ve gotten is a lot of advance information as to what you’re going to find out if you finish the book.
I suppose I’ve a lot of the boy in me. I hate introductions. Despise ’em. Yet, in a way, they’re necessary. I’ve always wanted to write a book where I could put the introduction at the end, or something like that. Because, really, an introduction seems terribly necessary.
But since I couldn’t do that, I waited until I had finished writing the rest of the book, and then I wrote this, which I am busily trying to keep from being an introduction. But it seems that there’s no way out. I might as well break down and confess—that’s what it is. Th’ sideshow, th’ side-show-w-w-w-w, Ladies-s-s-s an’ Gents, th’ sideshow, while farther on, the main performance band is tuning up for the grand-d-d entrée!
So, if you’re like me, and detest introductions, just let this part of the book slide on by and wait until you’ve finished the rest. Then maybe, some day when you haven’t anything to do, you can come back and see what I’ve been doing all this talking about. It’s simply this:
I’ve often been asked why a circus carries so many animals around with it; whether it is merely because it wants to “fill up space” or because they are cheap or to take up time before the rest of the performance. It really is none of these. Questions like that hurt a circus man’s pride. He really thinks a lot of his animals, and he’s terribly proud of the fact that he carries them around the country, because he knows that from the fact that he does like animals a great portion of America gains its knowledge of natural history.
There are comparatively few big zoölogical collections in America and all these are in the big cities; especially is this true where jungle animals are exhibited. The rest of the country must depend on the circus to make possible a close knowledge of the various beasts of faraway lands—and there is hardly a man or woman in America who was reared in a rural community who did not gain his or her early studies in this manner. And that pleases the circus man, because he always wants to feel that he is something else than merely a purveyor of amusement. Nor does he do it cheaply!
For instance, the next time the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus comes to town, you’ll find in its menagerie a total of forty-four elephants. A number of them are babies, purchased at an average price of about $2500 apiece, when all costs are considered. Half of them are full grown, worth from $5000 to $10,000 each, according to their performing ability. Lump them all at an average of $4000 apiece, and you have an investment of $186,000 in elephants, to say nothing of the food they eat, and of all animals, elephants are the champion hay eaters.