The Biggest, Blackest, Ugliest
Thing You Ever Saw.
Living, Breathing, Seeing, Speaking,
Chunk of
5,000 Pounds.
One Sight Will Be a Joy for a Lifetime!
Walk In.
With this I covered the bay window on the outside, thus making it serve the double purpose of advertisement and curtain. Then, taking my stand at the door, I fell to work.
A good many people were passing that way, and with my knowledge of human nature it was not hard to pick out half a dozen of the right sort for free admission. Securing these as a start for an audience, I began my outside oration on the animated chocolate drop, the mountain of flesh, the visible evolution of the protoplastic through the missing link of Darwin’s chain. I talked of the baboons of Sumatra and the Dyaks of Borneo; of the chimpanzee of Abyssinian deserts and the gorilla of the Congo—“And all this lesson to be learned for the small sum of half a dime. The lecture itself is worth the money, and the sight of the chocolate drop would be cheap at a fortune.”
What my audience thought I never knew nor cared, so long as they did not mob me. It is an actual fact that over two hundred people paid a nickel a piece to see the wonder of the age—which was only old “auntie” from Smoky Row, throned on the counter and feeling as big as a box-car. After deducting expenses I divided fairly with the old woman, sending her home again in a hack, while I proceeded to leave the neighborhood as soon as possible, before the questions of rent or trespass and license should come up. It seemed a miracle that I had not been stranded on one of them.