"The Freaks were all at supper one night when the Dwarf said something insulting to the Female Samson. He sat right opposite to her, and she just reached across the table and pulled him over to her by his collar. Then she stretched him across her lap and laid into him with her slipper till he howled as if he was a small boy who had gone in swimming on Sunday and his mother had just found it out. It wasn't so much the slipper that hurt him, though the Female Samson put all her muscle into the operation, but it was the disgrace of the thing; and when you remember that the Dwarf was forty-two years old, you can understand that he felt that the woman had taken a liberty with him. However, the next day he seemed to have forgotten all about it, and when the Giant reminded him of the circumstance, which he did every little while, the Dwarf would grin and say that we must let the women do what they liked, for they were a superior sort of being.
"One of the Female Samson's best feats was done in company with the Dwarf and the Giant. She had a horizontal bar fixed on the stage, about ten feet above the floor. On this bar she used to swing head downwards, just hooking her knees around it, as all the trapeze artists do. It looks sort of uncomfortable, but it is nothing when you are used to it. I had a trapeze chap once who would often go to sleep that way in hot weather. He said that all the blood in his body went into his head, and that made him feel sleepy, while it cooled off his body and legs. There's no accounting for tastes, but as for me, give me a good bed where I can stretch out, and I'll never ask to sleep on a trapeze bar.
"As I was saying, the Female Samson would swing on this bar, and then she would take the Dwarf's belt in her teeth and hold him in that way for five minutes. There was a swivel in the belt, so that the Dwarf would spin round while she was holding him, which he didn't like much, but which pleased the public. After she had swung the Dwarf she would do the same act with the Giant. She had to be very careful not to drop the Giant, for he was terribly afraid of breaking a leg, being, as I have said, particularly brittle; but she always said that he was as safe in her teeth as he would be if he was lying in his bed.
"It must have been about a fortnight after the Dwarf was sat on by the Fat Woman, and a week or more after he had been corrected in public by the Female Samson, that we had an unusually large evening audience, and everybody was in excellent spirits. The Female Samson had swung the Dwarf in her teeth, and after she had let go of him he had climbed up on a chair just behind her, and stood with his arms stretched out over her and the Giant as if he was saying 'Bless you, my children,' which was a regular part of the act, and never failed to bring him a round of applause, and induce people to say, 'What a jolly little chap that Dwarf is!' When the Female Samson had got a good grip of the Giant's belt, and had raised him about five feet from the floor, the Dwarf leaned a little bit forward and ran a pin into the Female Samson's ankle, or thereabouts. Nobody saw him do it, but it was easy to prove it on him afterwards, for he dropped the pin on the floor when he had finally got through with it, and everybody recognised it as one of his scarf-pins.
"The woman would naturally have shrieked when she felt the pin, but she had her mouth full of the Giant, and she couldn't do more than mumble a little in a half-smothered sort of way. The Dwarf paid no attention to that, but gave her another eye-opener with the pin. It went in about an inch, judging from what the Female Samson said when she described her sufferings, and it must have hurt her pretty bad; but she was full of pluck and bound to carry out her performance to the end. She stood three or four more prods, and then, not being able to stand it any longer without expressing her feelings in some way, she unhooked one leg and fetched the Dwarf a kick on the side of the head that reminded him that it was about time for him to get into his own room and lock the door, and convinced him that there ain't a bit of exaggeration in the tough stories that they tell about the kicking powers of an army mule. The kick sent the Dwarf clean across the platform, and the people, not understanding the situation, began to cry 'Shame.' Whether this flurried the Female Samson or not, or whether she lost her balance entirely on account of having unhooked one leg, I don't know. What I do know is that she slipped off the bar, and she and the Giant struck the floor with a crash that would have broken planks, if it had not been that the platform was built expressly to stand the strain of the Fat Woman.
"It wouldn't have been so bad if she had just dropped the Giant, and hung on to the bar herself. In that case he would probably have broken his left leg and arm and collar bone, just as he did break them, but his ribs would have been all right. As it was, the Female Samson's head came down just in the centre of him, and stove in about three-fourths of his ribs. She wasn't hurt at all, for, being a woman, and falling on her head, there was nothing for her to break, and the Giant was so soft that falling on him didn't even give her a headache. When some volunteers from the audience had picked up the Giant and put him on a stretcher and carried him to the hospital, where the doctors did their best to mend him, the Female Samson had a chance to explain, and the finding of a long scarf-pin on the platform, just under the bar, was evidence that she had told the truth, and corroborated the red stain on her stocking.
"It took four men and a policeman to hold her, and get her locked up in her room, she was that set on tearing the Dwarf into small pieces, and she'd have done it too, if she could have got at him. He had sense enough to see the situation, and to discharge himself without waiting for me to discharge him. He ran away in the course of the night, and I never saw him again. I don't think he ever went into another Dime Museum, and I have heard that he got a situation as inspector of gas meters, which is very probable, considering what a malicious little rascal he was. Well, we have to deal with all sorts of people in our business, and I suppose it's the same with you, though you haven't mentioned what your business is. But you take my advice and steer clear of Dwarfs. There ain't a man living that can do anything with them except with a club, and no man likes to take a club to anything as small as a Dwarf."
W. L. ALDEN.
