He stopped speaking to any one after that, and refused to answer when spoken to. He stayed in his cage all the time, sleeping there nights, and never touching the cooked food sent him from the kitchen, but there was never any meat left over for the lions.
The Royal Roman Hippodrome and Three Ring Circus played to remarkably good business all summer, and finally brought up at the old winter quarters in New York.
One of the first visitors upon their arrival there was Mrs. Patsy McLockin, who came to see what in the world had happened to her husband, for she hadn’t heard a word from him for over two months.
Stetson took her into the room where workmen were getting every thing in order; for the show was to begin its winter indoor engagement next day.
In his cage in one corner, gnawing a bloody shank of meat, crouched Bobo. Stetson took the woman over to the cage; and Mrs. McLockin, after looking at the wild man for a few seconds, broke out sobbing.
“You’ve gone and made him crazy, you have,” she wailed. “Patsy, dear, don’t you know your old woman?”
But Bobo, the wild man, continued crunching his bone, and paid no attention to the woman in front of his cage. The manager stole out of the room softly, and left them together. There was nothing he could do.
Each week he had gone to Bobo’s cage, and tried to talk to the wild man, telling him that he had better give up the business and settle down somewhere. But the wild man never paid any attention to him; and when one day Poole Brothers tried to take him out of his cage by force, one man was killed and Stetson himself seriously injured, so that had to be given up.
All that winter the side show connected with Poole Brothers’ Royal Roman Hippodrome and Three Ring Circus played to packed houses; and probably no one paid any particular attention to a sad-faced Irish woman of middle age who spent most of the time standing in front of the cage of Bobo, the wild man, weeping silently.