“That’s right,” said Mr. Rabinowitz, with a proud smile. “Every night comes my little Isadore und asks me for a quarter, und alvays I gif it to him.”
“But ain’t it teachin’ him bad habits, having all that money to spend on himself?” insisted Mr. Pincus.
“Pincus,” said his friend, “I tell you a secret: he ain’t spendin’ it on himself; alvays he goes und puts it in his savings bank, only, it ain’t a savings bank—that’s what he thinks it is. It’s the gas meter.”
§ 336 An Awful Blow for Mr. Barnum
The late Alf T. Ringling, of Ringling Brothers, loved the lore of the circus. In his library he had shelves of books and pictures and documents and ancient posters pertaining to life under the big tops. Also he knew hundreds of anecdotes, humorous and otherwise, modern and ancient, which related to some aspect or another of the business he all his active life had followed. A year or two before his death he told me this one, which he vouched for as having been an actual occurrence:
It was back in the days before the Ringling Show had attained large proportions, when Barnum and Bailey’s circus was, as its billing proclaimed, The Greatest Show on Earth.
The aggregation, with its menagerie, its three rings and its elevated stages and hippodrome track, and all, was touring the South. A day or two earlier, an acrobat who just had closed a season with a traveling burlesque troupe—by special request of its manager—applied for a job with the circus and was given it. His act did not give full satisfaction to the director of performances, who so reported to Mr. Barnum, and the latter sent for the new performer, and told him that his work fell short of the desired standard.
“You recommended yourself pretty highly when you came around the other day,” said Mr. Barnum. “In fact, as I recall, you told me you were the best man in your line anywhere. Now I hear that you haven’t made good.”
Being an artiste, the young man naturally had his share of temperament.
“Is that so?” he answered with heavy sarcasm. “Well, lemme tell you somethin’—there ain’t nobody can reflect on my abilities without answerin’ to me. If I hear any more of this sort of talk I’ll quit!”