“‘Say, boys,’ he said with one of those back platform gestures, ‘I’ll tell you the star hard luck story—say, the best, and no appeal. Me, a long time ago playing the little towns in Ohio with a merry-go-round. Think of it, yes, but don’t laugh, for it was a good game in them days and I was turnin’ coin. We put up on a lot for four days for a county fair, an’ business is so good that I stops sleepin’ back of the tent an’ goes to the inn. Well, say, the barkeeper of that tavern was a pass fiend for fair, an’ he keeps strikin’ me for free rides on the wooden horses. I laughs him off, but he keeps at it. So one day I gets mad an’ throws him hard. He looks at me over the black bottle an’ sez: ‘Say, you give a free ride ev’ry time they gets the brass ring, don’t ye?’
“I says ‘yes,’ an’ he shuts up like a law abider, an’ that ends it. But what do you suppose that glass rubber does? Say, he comes out to the lot with his gang, an’ while he wasn’t lookin’ he pours a hole bottle of gildin’ fluid into the ring slide, an’ say, everybody on the lot was gettin’ gold rings an’ ridin’ free all night. It hit me so hard I had to fold up and to the wagons an’ do the sneak without settlin’ me last payment on the privilege to the fair folks.”
This seemed to please the ring bank crowd and the Concert Manager was full of loose gab. Finally the talk drifted to animals, and then to elephants, and up speaks the Concert Manager.
“I never comes through the animal tent and sees the elephant herd,” he says, “but it has me rememberin’ sumthin’ that happens when I’m with the John Robinson show doin’ the talkin’ from the ring an’ makin’ me extra with a couple of blackface turns, a singin’ act an’ a knockabout after the Big Show.
“Say, for real heart them elephants has got all humanity beat to a standstill. Seems to me that the worst weakness that is in the breast of man is the feelin’ that pulls him away from another man when they ought to be stickin’ together. Say, it ain’t many a man that remembers a good turn, and kind acts is forgotten as quick as money that’s owin’. But them big boys with the trunks, say, they ain’t forgettin’ nothin’. Youse can do a good turn for a man an’ he’ll throw you the next day, but the elephant ain’t forgettin’ the one what has done him sumthin’ good, be he man or beast.
“Well, in them days we was carryin’ six big fellows, an’ part of my game was to let their backs out to the storekeepers for banners. I’d lay it out with some drygoods dealer that was enterprisin’ enough to do some real sensational advertisin’. Then we’d have the banners painted, swing ’em over the backs, an’ Mr. Mann has a good showin’ when we makes the parade down the street. I was payin’ the trainer a little extry to see that the banners got on, and, say, that boy for liquor was the original reservoir. It seems that the money I’m givin’ him allus buys a drink. He keeps it up right along an’ gits many a warnin’. There wasn’t a guy with the outfit that could handle the beasts like he could, an’ the Boss was allus afeerd sumthin’ would happen.
“And it did by and by. The trainer don’t pay attention to the warnin’, and one matinee he queers the act. He gets his elephants all mixed up in his ring, an’ there comes near bein’ a breakaway but for a lot of spearin’. The Boss sees it all, an’ he gets the trainer out without any talk. The boys gets the elephants back to their stable, but ev’ry one is looking for trouble.