“‘Ah, the circus! Quite a diverting entertainment. Originated with the Greeks.’
“Now wouldn’t that make you itch? Me mind gets to chasin’ ’roun’ for a proper come-back, an’ I tries to recollect the names of some of them old guys what went paddlin’ ’roun’ in a sheet an’ sandals spittin’ out wise words that no one has forgot. An’ mem’ry lands me at the right dock, so I han’s this to the college boy:
“‘Yes,’ sez I, ‘I believe it was Aristophanes who wrote an epic on the circus to be read at one of Nero’s spring openin’s.’
“The words is hardly out of me mouth when he gives me one of those looks that would have made Peary thought he had found the pole. So I lays me copy on the desk and gives five bells to back water an’ I’m in the elevator. An’ so help me Bob, I hardly reaches the pavement before I sees sheets of paper flutterin’ in the air an’ me copy falls on the asphalt. The college boy had lifted it. Now you would think that it was a sheet that roasted us. Not at all, not at all. He gives us a two-column write-up and three half tones that had me up to the bar an’ dizzy for a day. The worst will fool you.
“An’, say, that reminds me. Remember when we was playin’ the week’s run in Chicago las’ July? Well, I’d been skatin’ roun’ to the papers an’ buyin’ drinks for the press boys, an’ it was joggin’ along to three on the dials when I remembers I have a bed at the hotel. It was out near the lot, an’ I starts out to walk. I’m crossin’ the railroad tracks when a weary steps out an’ asks me for a match. I gives up, when another comes into the talk an’ says, ‘Give us money.’ Say, I didn’t have but thirty cents, an’ I gave up. But the highwaymen thought I was lyin’, an’ was going to tap me when I says, ‘Now, boys, let’s argue this out.’ So I takes them two Jesse Jameses under a lamp post an’ gives them a josh talk on the Big Show that has ’em serfy.”
“Well,” said the Boss Canvasman, who was always interested when there was any fight talk, “what happened, what happened?”
“What happened?” says the Press Agent. “Hear me! I takes out me pass-pad an’ writes passes for them robbers until a policeman comes, when I turns ’em over. An’ that ain’t all; I gets a column story in each of the afternoon sheets on how the Press Agent of the Big Show captures two bold boys, an’ the Gov’nor gives me the good word and a double X, an’ I says thankee an’ repeats me motto, ‘An’ workin’ one is workin’ all,’ to every barkeeper that was sellin’ after midnight that evenin’.”