"O NANNY, WILT THOU GANG WI' ME?"
[WHAT THE SHOWMAN DID NOT TELL.]
BY WILLIAM H. RIDEING.
When the showman came to our town, he told the audience a great many things as he passed from cage to cage in his combined circus and menagerie. He told them of the great wangdoodle, two of which were brought from South Africa in three ships, and he told them other stories, which made the very little people open their eyes and mouths wide, but which the intelligent boys and girls only smiled at.
He was a great humbug—there is no doubt about it. But one day I found him alone, and cornered him. Then he told me what he didn't tell to his audiences, and that was much more interesting than a great part of his lecture. When he found that I did not believe in the immense sums which, according to his posters, some of his articles cost, he said:
"But we do pay big prices for good curiosities, and no mistake, though our posters and show-bills do tell some pretty big stories. I once paid twenty-five thousand dollars for a baby hippopotamus, and if I could get another one to-day, I'd pay just as much, or more. A full-grown hippopotamus is pretty expensive too. That one over there cost us four thousand dollars. Elephants, as a rule, are not dear, and you can usually buy a fine specimen for about two thousand dollars. A giraffe costs all the way up from one thousand to five thousand; a tiger or a lion, about five hundred; a zebra, fifteen hundred; and a polar bear, about a thousand dollars. Polar bears," he added, meditatively, "are delicate. 'Why don't you dye him black?' said a fellow in the audience to me once. 'Because,' said I, 'he'll die quick enough.' They do like a good cold snap, with the thermometer away down below zero, the polars do.
"'Is the wild-beast trade a reg'lar business?'" he said, repeating a question of mine. "I should say it was, and more than one large fortune is invested in it. Some of it is done in Hamburg, a good deal in the sea-ports of Holland, some in Falmouth, and some in London. Probably more of it is done in New York than anywhere in Europe. There's a man in Falmouth who boards every ship approaching the English coast off the Lizard, and buys most of the curiosities the sailors have brought with them from the foreign lands in which they have been. But only a very small part of the whole supply comes through sea-captains and sailors. Expeditions go out into Africa and South America to hunt and capture the wild beasts of those continents, and there is one man whose last camp included ninety-two servants, seventy-two camels, twelve mules, twenty-seven horses, and three donkeys.
"This dealer is a Maltese, who, when a boy, used to knock about the docks, and seeing the strange animals on board some of the ships, promised himself that he would make wild-beast-hunting his trade when he became a man. He has lost more than one fortune, and is probably poor now. It's a wonder that he's alive; the business is full of dangers, and there is no certainty of profit in it.