A man who had evidently come up the street on the saloon side went into the side show and seemed fascinated with the tattooed man from Borneo, who exhibited upon his person a great variety of ornamental designs, such as roses, landscapes, ballet girls, ships, etc. “Ladies ’n gent’l’men,” he said, “come ’n shee zhis great phenomenon. Always wanted see livin’ picshers. Zis fus’ livin’ picsher ever shee. Set ’em up all round; z’my treat.”
The tattooed man leaned down and hissed in a low tone: “Say, stop dat song and dance and git a move on you, Cully, or I’ll tump you one on de smeller. See?”
It must be said of Barnum and Bailey’s show that it is orderly and well conducted. The gang of swindlers, toughs and confidence men who generally follow circuses are not allowed to annoy the crowd. The tents are large and the accommodations good. Their immense business is conducted with perfect system and each man in the aggregation fills his place in producing the harmonious working of the whole.
The performance itself was only the average circus performance, with a great deal that was neither new nor remarkable, but with a feature here and there that was far above the ordinary even in that line. The trouble is in attempting to do too much. Had the programme been executed in the old style, in one ring, it might have been too long; but it would have impressed the public far more than when distributed among three rings. The spectator becomes bewildered and catches a good thing only now and then, while he misses possibly two or three other brilliant acts. There could have been no complaint for want of variety. There was a little of everything and all done at least with the usual skill of the circus performer.
Several innovations were introduced, among them a female ring master and a female clown. Trilby on horseback, a skirt dance on horseback, and a serpentine dance on horseback are others. The water carnival, an exhibition of high diving, somersaults into water and other aquatic sports is perhaps the newest circus idea. It is given in a lake of water, to use the fertile press agent’s phrase, forty-two feet across and six feet deep. In the menagerie are a number of new animals, notably several new elephants, making the herd now number twenty-four. The Ethnological Congress is all new, and those who have seen the Midway Plaisances at the big fairs will be especially interested in this peripatetic plaisance, which contains a curious assortment of curious peoples. In its acrobatic department, the aerial swinging and leaping and high trapeze work were very fine indeed; and with the equestrian accomplishments of the Meeks sisters, particularly, when the two rode one horse, constituted the most meritorious parts of the performance. A notable feature also was the performance in the ring of a herd of elephants, among other things going through a quadrille. It is such a performance and, to quote the voluble agent again, such an aggregation of panoramic novelties, with much that is old, that the public generally will leave the big tents fully satisfied that they have received their money’s worth.
(Houston Daily Post, Wednesday morning, October 30, 1895.)