Jack was introduced to a small, fat man, who, in the men’s dressing-tent, was busy washing the red and white paint off his face.
“Sam is the head clown,” explained the canvasman. “He’s been in the business—let’s see, how long is it now, Sam?”
“Forty years this season. I was one of the first clowns that Barnum ever hired. You’ll find some grease paint over there,” he added to Jack; and then he and the canvasman began to talk about matters connected with the circus, paying no more attention to the runaway lad.
Jack was quite nervous, but he made-up after an original idea of his own. He turned his coat and vest wrongside out, and, with the aid of Ike, put them on backwards. Then, feeling rather foolish over what he was about to do, he stepped from the dressing-tent and walked over to where the manager had said he would wait for him.
Several of the performers who saw Jack emerge laughed at his curious costume and “make-up.”
“Well, I must look funny, no matter how I feel,” he said. “I hope I can do my funny dance.”
“Ha! Hum!” exclaimed the manager, when he saw Jack. “That’s not so bad. Let’s see what you can do.”
A crowd of performers, and some of the circus helpers, gathered in a ring about the boy. Then Jack began. He repeated some of the things he had done in the theatre at home, but added to them. He sang, he danced, and cut all sorts of capers, gaining more and more confidence in himself as he heard the crowd laughing. He even detected a smile on the rather grim face of the manager.
Then, to cap his performance, Jack caught up a couple of paper-covered hoops, or rings, similar to those through which some of the performers jumped from the backs of running horses. Holding these under his arms, like a pair of wings, he began to imitate a clumsy bird. He hopped up on a board that rested across a saw-horse, and, from that elevation, pretended to fly to the ground, but doing it so grotesquely that he stepped through both hoops and was all tangled up in them.
This produced some hearty laughs, and one or two of the women performers applauded, for Ike had whispered to them what Jack’s trial meant.