IN the town of Antelope, situated on a river of the same name in the State of Texas, every living person was hurrying to the circus. The inhabitants were interested all the more since from the foundation of the town that was the first time that a circus had come to it with dancing women, minstrels, and rope-walkers. The town was recent. Fifteen years before not only was there not one house there, but in all the region round about there were no white people. Moreover, on the forks of the river, on the very spot on which Antelope was situated, stood an Indian village called Chiavatta. That had been the capital of the Black Snakes, who in their time were such an eyesore to the neighboring settlements of Berlin, Gründenau, and Harmonia, that these settlements could endure them no longer. True, the Indians were only defending their “land,” which the State government of Texas had guaranteed to them forever by the most solemn treaties; but what was that to the colonists of Berlin, Gründenau, and Harmonia? It is true that they took from the Black Snakes earth, air, and water, but they brought in civilization in return; the redskins on their part showed gratitude in their own way,—that is, by taking scalps from the heads of the Germans. Such a state of things could not be suffered. Therefore, the settlers from Berlin, Gründenau, and Harmonia assembled on a certain moonlight night to the number of four hundred, and, calling to their aid Mexicans from La Ora, fell upon sleeping Chiavatta.
The triumph of the good cause was perfect. Chiavatta was burned to ashes, and the inhabitants, without regard to sex or age, were cut to pieces. Only small parties of warriors escaped who at that time were absent on a hunt. In the town itself not one soul was left living, mainly because the place lay in the forks of a river, which, having overflowed, as is usual in spring-time, surrounded the settlement with an impassable gulf of waters. But the same forked position which ruined the Indians, seemed good to the Germans. From the forks it was difficult to escape, but the place was defensible. Thanks to this thought, emigration set in at once from Berlin, Gründenau, and Harmonia to the forks, in which in the twinkle of an eye, on the site of the wild Chiavatta, rose the civilized town of Antelope. In five years it numbered two thousand inhabitants.
In the sixth year they discovered on the opposite bank of the forks a quicksilver mine; the working of this doubled the number of inhabitants. In the seventh year, by virtue of Lynch law, they hanged on the square of the town the last twelve warriors of the Black Snakes, who were caught in the neighboring “Forest of the Dead,”—and henceforth nothing remained to hinder the development of Antelope. Two “Tagblätter” (daily papers) were published in the town, and one “Montagsrevue” (Monday Review). A line of railroad united the place with Rio del Norte and San Antonio; on Opuncia Gasse (Opuncia Street) stood three schools, one of which was a high school. On the square where they had hanged the last Black Snakes, the citizens had erected a philanthropic institution. Every Sunday the pastors taught in the churches love of one’s neighbor, respect for the property of others, and similar virtues essential to a civilized society; a certain travelling lecturer read a dissertation “On the rights of nations.”
The richest inhabitants had begun to talk of founding a university, to which the government of the State was to contribute. The citizens were prosperous. The trade in quicksilver, oranges, barley, and wine brought them famous profits. They were upright, thrifty, industrious, systematic, fat. Whoever might visit in later years Antelope with a population nearing twenty thousand would not recognize in the rich merchants of the place those pitiless warriors who fifteen years before had burned Chiavatta. The days passed for them in their stores, workshops, and offices; the evenings they spent in the beer-saloon “Golden Sun” on Rattlesnake Street. Listening to those sounds somewhat slow and guttural of “Mahlzeit, Mahlzeit!” (meal-time, meal-time), to those phlegmatic “Nun ja wissen Sie, Herr Müller, ist das aber möglich?” (Well, now, Herr Müller, but is that possible?), that clatter of goblets, that sound of beer dropping on the floor, that plash of overflowing foam; seeing that calm, that ness, those Philistine faces covered with fat, those fishy eyes,—a man might suppose himself in a beer-garden in Berlin or Monachium, and not on the ruins of Chiavatta. But in the town everything was “ganz gemüthlich” (altogether cosey), and no one had a thought of the ruins. That evening the whole population was hastening to the circus, first, because after hard labor recreation is as praiseworthy as it is agreeable; second, because the inhabitants were proud of its arrival. It is well-known that circuses do not come to every little place; hence the arrival of the Hon. M. Dean’s troupe had confirmed the greatness and magnificence of Antelope. There was, however, a third and perhaps the greatest cause of the general curiosity.
No. Two of the programme read as follows: