The first of these was a powerful Italian, topped with a dense brush of rebellious black hair. The circumstances leading up to his employment in the Great Oriental Dime Museum as the "Marvellous Tuft-nosed Wild Man, Hoolagaloo, captured on the Island of Milo, in the Ægean Sea, after a desperate struggle," were these:
He had been a wood-chopper, possessed of prodigious strength and a violent temper. One day he and a companion in the mountains fell out and fought. The Italian then had to walk twenty miles to find a surgeon, being in great need of his services. When he presented himself to the surgeon his face was heavily bandaged with blood-soaked cloths. He began to fumble in his pockets, and his face betrayed deep anxiety when he failed to find what he sought.
"What is the matter?" asked the surgeon, "and what are you seeking?"
The man uncovered his mouth and in a voice like the sound of an ophicleide, answered:
"Mina nosa."
"Your nose!"
"Aha. T'ought I bring 'im, butta no find."
"Brought your nose in your pocket!"
"Dunno—may be losta. Fella fighta me; cut offa da nose."
The surgeon assured him that the severed nose would have been useless.