CHAPTER XLV.
IN THE MENAGERIE.
Before entering the menagerie let us look at the huge cannon standing here outside the dressing-tent. It looks like a ponderous affair, but investigation shows that it is made of wood. There is a latitudinal slit at the lower end and a lever. It requires an effort to push the lever back which indicates that there is a pretty strong spring in the bottom of the cannon. This is the piece of ordnance that Zazel is shot out of into a net some distance away. She lies on her back in the cannon, which is tilted to an angle of about forty-five degrees, assumes a rigid position, and at the word fire the lever is pulled back, the spring released, a pistol is fired, and while Zazel is coming through the air a little cloud of smoke rolls from the cannon's mouth and is swept away almost before she lands on her back in the net. Sig. Farini says Zazel is his daughter. Barnum says that when he was in London where Zazel was doing the cannon act, creating a great furore, the pretty little French girl came to him crying and asked to be taken away. She was only getting about six dollars a week for the perilous work she was doing and Farini was drawing a large salary out of which she got this pittance.
Sig. Farini also owns the Zulus that have appeared here. As their manager he is well paid for them, and as the Zulus sleep in the menagerie tent and have but few wants and he gives them about a dollar a day—so Barnum says—Cetawayo's subjects are a profitable investment for him. Zulu Charley on exhibition in New York gets the magnificent sum of one dollar a day for doing his native war-dance and standing fire under the numerous eyes that are leveled at him daily. There is a bit of romance about this black warrior. Among the crowds who thronged to see the antics of the Zulus at Bunnell's Dime Museum, New York City, last winter, was an Italian girl named Anita G. Corsini, eighteen years old, a music teacher by occupation, and the daughter of a Mr. Corsini who is in business in New York. Zulu Charley won her admiration and love, and she spent many quarters from her hard-earned savings to see the dusky object of her affections. Charlie did not repel her affections and they swore to be true to each other. Mr. Corsini, however, did not regard with favor the prospect of a marriage between his daughter and a negro, and did everything in his power to dissuade her from carrying out her intention. Last week, however, the couple eloped, but while on their way to a minister's house they were arrested at the instance of Anita's father.
When the case came up on the following morning in the Jefferson Market court the father wanted to have the girl sent to Blackwell's Island, but upon her promise to obey him and leave the Zulu he changed his mind and took her home. But she again met Charley and, accompanied by another Zulu named Usikali, and Charles Richards, a white man, they went to the residence of the Rev. R. O. Page, Brooklyn, and asked to be married. The minister consented, but he seems to have made a mistake, addressing all the questions to Usikali instead of to Charley, and then pronounced them man and wife. On learning his mistake, however, he performed another ceremony between the right parties. The newly married couple then went to the museum, where the bridegroom took part in the usual Zulu war-dance.
The tattooed Greek Costentenus with his picture-covered flesh is always an object of admiration to the ladies. He says he was tattooed into his present shape by Chinese Tartars and tells a harrowing story of his sufferings.
The torturing doesn't seem to have impaired his health or bothered his appetite any. He is a magnificent looking man physically and in his unstripped condition is a figure that the eye of an artist would delight to dwell upon. His only rival is a lady who is now on exhibition in England and whose breast and upper and lower limbs are covered with tattooing. I do not know her history, but she probably submitted to the process to make money out of it. Dr. Lacassagne, a French physician, has published a book on the habit of tattooing as practised in the French army. There are professional tattooers in Paris and Lyons who charge half a franc for each design. Generally the tattooer has cartoons on paper and reproduces these on the skin by a mechanical process. Large designs cost a good deal; a big representation of an Indian holding up the flag of the United States costs the decorated person fifteen francs. China ink is the coloring substance preferred, touched up with vermilion. Dr. Lacassagne has collected one thousand three hundred and thirty-three designs, tattooed on three hundred and seventy-eight members of the Second African Battalion or on men under arrest in military prisons. Many were tattooed on every part of the body except the inner side of the thighs. Patriotic and religious designs and inscriptions amounted to ninety-one. There were two hundred and eighty amorous and erotic devices and three hundred and forty-four works of pure fantasy, such as ladies driving in a carriage, the horses plunging and servants rushing to their heads. The great efforts of art are reserved for the surfaces of the breast and back. The subjects of many of the drawings are best left undescribed, the imagination of a dissipated soldier being quite savage in its purity. Among patriotic and religious emblems are cited two devils, nine theological virtues, six crucifixes, two sisters of charity, three heads of Prussians, not flattered, and five portraits of ideal girls of Alsace, with no fewer than thirty-four busts of the republic. Among animals the lion and the serpent are the favorite totems. Among flowers the pansy is generally preferred. The æsthetic classes will be grieved to hear that not a single lily appears, and there was only one daisy. Among mythological subjects the sirens are the greatest favorites; next comes Bacchus with his pards, Venus, Apollo and Cupid.
Gen. Tom Thumb and his agreeable little wife are once more swinging around the sawdust circle with their old friend Barnum. Gen. Thumb is the most successful dwarf the world has ever seen. He is rich and as happy as if he and his wife were as tall as Captain and Mrs. Bates, the giant and giantess whose immense forms loom up above the crowds that throng the menagerie tent. I have written elsewhere about captain and his wife.
"Tummy T'um is ze worst bluff at pokair I ever saw," said Campanini one day, in a confidential mood; "I ride wiz heem in sefenty-seex from Pittsburg to Veeling, and he loose me elefen dollars on a pair of deuces. Ze Generale is a bad man at ze national game."
Campanini, it is well known, is exceedingly economical, and the loss of eleven dollars he gulped down as well as he could, sinking it away below the region of his lower register. It was a misfortune he will never be able to forget entirely, but General Thomas Thumb is a perfect basilisk to the distinguished tenor. Whenever their shows exhibit in the same town the singer looks up the dwarf and challenges him to a game of chance. They last met in St. Louis, a short time before Campanini's departure for Europe, and oddly enough they settled on a game of billiards, although probably for prudential reasons on Campanini's part, as it was impossible for Tom Thumb to win such a disastrous sum as eleven dollars from the Italian at that manly game.
The game took place in the principal billiard-room of St. Louis, and it was rendered doubly interesting by the fact that Charles Mapleson, faultlessly attired, kept the talley. A great crowd was soon attracted into the room, and the only regret of the two distinguished players was that they had not charged a general admission, reserved seats extra.