While waiting for the performance to begin let us drop into the dressing-tent. It is divided in the middle by a strip of canvas about seven feet wide, and this half space is again divided into dressing-rooms, one for the men, the other for the women. The large space is the green-room of the circus. It is not only that, but it is the property-room. The performers are preparing for the grand entree. Helmets are lying around loose, and wardrobes appear to be in a state of great confusion. Cheap velvet gaily bespangled is quite plentiful. It looks best at a distance. Quantities of white chalk are brought into use, each man's face being highly powdered, his eyebrows blackened, etc. The dressing-room is small and there is apparently much confusion while the performers are donning their respective costumes. But each knows what his duty is, and does it accordingly, without really interfering with anyone else. On the other side is the ladies' room; into this we are not permitted to cast our profane peepers, but we know from exterior knowledge that paint and powder, short dresses and flesh tights are rapidly converting ordinary women into equestrienne angels. Outside of the dressing-rooms are the horses, ranged in regular order. At a given signal the riders appear, mount and enter the ring. As they are dashing about in apparent recklessness let us look more clearly at them. They all look young and fresh, but there are old men in the party who for twenty-five or thirty years have figured in the sawdust ring. Chalk hides their wrinkles, dyestuffs their gray hairs, and skull caps their baldness. Yonder lady who sits her steed gracefully, and who looks as blooming as a rose on a June morning, is not only a mother, but a grandmother. And there is George who was engaged last winter to do "nothing, you know." He finds his duties embrace riding, leaping, tumbling, object-holding, and occasionally in short times drive a team on the road. There is one rider who was formerly a manager himself. He had a big fortune once, but a few bad seasons swamped it, and he is now glad to take his place as a performer on a moderate salary. Returning to the dressing-room after the entree, we find the clown engaged in putting the finishing touches to his make-up. We must look closely at him to recognize him. He does not seem to be the same fellow we met at the breakfast table, in stylish clothes and a shirt-front ornamented with a California diamond. He has given himself an impossible moustache with charcoal, and has painted bright red spots on his cheeks. You think him a mere boy as he springs into the ring, but he has been a mere boy for many a long year, and his bones are getting stiff and his joints ache in spite of his assumed agility. The "gags" that he repeats and the songs that make you laugh are not funny to him, for he has repeated them in precisely the same inflection for an indefinite number of nights. He comes out to play for the principal act of horsemanship. Meantime in the dressing-room, if it is damp or chilly, the performers are wrapping themselves in blankets or moving about to keep warm. When the bareback rider returns from the ring he usually disrobes, takes a bath and dons his ordinary attire; but the less important performers must keep themselves in readiness to render any assistance which they may be called upon to perform.
There is but little repose for the weary circus people during a season. Frequently they stay but one day in a place, and the next town is fifteen or twenty miles distant. All the properties must be packed up, the helmets and cheap velvet, the tights and the tunics must be stowed away and the journey made by night. The following day brings a recurrence of the dangers and toil of circus life.
A clown who was importuned by some young ladies of Mill City, Iowa, as they passed the dressing-tent, to let them in, said he'd do it for a kiss from each. There were four in the party and they held a brief consultation when they came back and wanted to know if one kiss wouldn't do.
"Yes, one each," said Mr. Merryman, who had his paint on and looked anything but pretty.
Again they consulted, and at last agreed. They were respectable young ladies and were slow to do anything that might compromise them, still they kissed the clown, who lifted a flap of the tent and passed in each as she paid the osculatory fee. The kisses did his old heart good, and when he went into the ring so fresh and happy did he feel that he actually got off a new and good joke, which is an extraordinary thing for a clown. The clown is pretty much the whole show to the little folks, and there are many grown people who cherish fondly the childish admiration they had had for the retailer of old jokes and singer of poor comic songs. He talks and jumps around as lightly as if he were a young man; but often if the reader could be around when the chalk and the streaks of black and red have been washed off he would see that the light-hearted laugh-provoker is an old man wrinkled and gray, and that he is to be pardoned for not being able to say anything funny that would be new at his time of life. I like everything about a clown, his clothes, his comical hat, his old jokes, his poor voice and his worse songs. He tries to amuse other people's children, and therefore I am glad when I hear he has children of his own, as the following touching story told in verse has something to say about:—
THE CLOWN'S BABY.
It was out on the western frontier—
The miner's, rugged and brown,
Were gathered around the posters;
The circus had come to town!
The great tent shone in the darkness,
Like a wonderful palace of light,
And rough men crowded the entrance—
Shows didn't come every night.
Not a woman's face among them!
Many a face that was bad,
And some that were only vacant,
And some that were very sad;
And behind the canvas curtain,
In a corner of the place,
The clown with chalk and vermilion,
Was "making up" his face.
A weary-looking woman,
With a smile that still was sweet,
Sewed on a little garment,
With a candle at her feet.
Pantaloons stood ready and waiting;
It was the time for the going on,
But the clown in vain searched wildly—
The "property baby" was gone!