"As I say, the poetry was strictly on the bum, but what it lacked in quality it made up in quantity and he could spiel it off by the yard. Whenever he got stuck for a rhyme he would blow the whistle which he used to call the crowd in front of the freak he was lecturing about and move to the next platform. That didn't happen often, but whenever we had a Circassian Beauty among the freaks Merritt's poetry got so sentimental that no one but a bride and groom could stand for it—and it had to be early in the honeymoon at that. He would ring in turtle doves and azure skies and all the wishy-washy things in natural history and mythology and it was positively sickening.
"He sure had a soft place in his heart for Circassian Beauties, and as they were as common as wire tappers on Broadway under a reform administration he was always getting sentimental. We used to get a new lot of freaks each week; our agent in New York engaged 'em and sent on the advertising matter ahead, and when we looked over the list I could see Merritt's face brighten up if there happened to be one of the fuzzy blondes included in the bunch.
"Business was good, in spite of Merritt's poetry, so that I didn't kick when I saw that another one was coming. It was a good assortment: a Legless Wonder, The Man Who Breaks Paving Stones With His Bare Fists, a pair of Siamese Twins, a Leopard Boy and a particularly fuzzy Circassian Beauty. I saw Merritt's eyes grow soft when he looked at her photograph, and I prayed for a large proportion of the newly wedded among the audience that week.
"He made sheep's eyes and threw a chest."
"Well, Merritt starts in with the Stone Breaker and restrains himself pretty well; the only sentiment he got in was a fervent wish that 'a certain blonde beauty, with eyes of cerulean blue, would not break a heart which time would prove tender and true,' as ruthlessly as this man cracked rocks. He was gradually working up to the blonde, you understand, and he got warmer as he approached. The next one was the Legless Wonder, and he got a little tangled up in his comparisons when he sprung his poetry about him and tried to ring in the Circassian, and he had to blow his whistle like blazes to spare the blushes of the audience. The Siamese Twins gave him a good opening about 'bonds eternal' and the 'season vernal' and he didn't do a thing with it. The Leopard Boy was a cinch for him as he declaimed that
"'They say that beauty is but skin deep.
And as you gaze upon this freak,
You will, I think, agree with me,
That though beneath he fair may be,
You'd much prefer to look the same
As the fair being who next will claim
Our admiration and attention,
With charms too numerous to mention.'
"That made the Leopard Boy mad, for you know that freaks are as proud of their deformities as a mother is of a new baby, and look on normal people as objects of pity. But Merritt blew his whistle and passed on to the Circassian, and he made sheep's eyes and threw a chest as his fingers toyed with her peroxide locks. Say, it was sickening to listen to, and I saw that even the Stone Breaker was showing signs of distress and couldn't stand much of it. He bore up pretty well at first, while Merritt stuck to describing the 'golden locks and eyes of blue,' but when he got to the 'sugar is sweet and so are you,' stage he commenced to get mad and moved over to the platform.
"'Say, Mag,' says he, 'get down offen dat staige an' come away from de guy. It ain't in our contrac' dat we has ter stand for his gettin' soft on youse an' stringin' youse like dat. Come down, er I'll climb up an' break his face fer him.'