Many will remember the telescopic affair which P. T. Barnum exhibited in his parades for several seasons in the early ’70’s. It was a massively carved chariot, and he called it the “Temple of Juno.” When extended to its full height, by means of internal machinery, it reached an altitude of forty feet. A gorgeous effect was given it by the precious metals which studded it and by numerous mirrors. Upon an elevated seat, just beneath a rich and unique oriental canopy of the most elaborate finish, sat, in perfect nonchalance, the representative queen, surrounded by gods and goddesses in mythical costume. Elephants, camels and dromedaries completed the tableau. During that period of his career, a season of great prosperity, Mr. Barnum used frequently to lecture on temperance in his tents. He was shrewd enough to appreciate how much to his pecuniary advantage was his devotion to what he called the “noble cause.” Crowds came as much to get a glimpse at him and to hear him talk as for a sight at the circus.
CHAPTER V
THE SIDE-SHOW
Order has come out of the confusion at the lot when the parade returns. All is in readiness for the performances, seats and stands and rings and trapezes in place, and every man at his post. The cages are dragged from the parade to the menagerie tent, the horses led to their canvas stables, and elephants push the red and gilt vehicles into place. Down drops the sidewall, ropes are set, and the preparation is complete.
Stolid yokels fill the enclosure in front. Two men are proclaiming with fluency and skill and oratorical effect the wonders of the side-show, and a row of huge banners adds weight to their discourse. Pictured by word and brush are the wild man, the midget, the Egyptian giant, the woman ventriloquist, the knife throwers, the fortune tellers, the electric lady, the snake charmer, the others who make up the collection of oddities, and the group of negro jubilee singers. The band thumps seductively inside and frequently, as an evidence of good faith, one of the freaks is called to the front for a moment’s survey. Doubts vanish and the crowd hesitates no longer, when suddenly as the pièce de resistance is brandished aloft, impaled on a slender iron rod, a raw hunk of beef. It is to be the wild man’s dinner!
By far the most interesting specimen in our side-show is this wild man. His history is long and eventful. The side-show lecturer tells it vividly, many times a day, and invariably the same when he is not in a facetious mood. The narrative, however, is always thrilling, never commonplace. A curtain shrouds the interior of the cage in which the creature “lives and subsists in a state of nature.” Pulled aside, it reveals a gloomy den, half filled with hay, where crouches, clawed and tusked, and scantily clad in skins, the rude savage. The fleeting and obscure view of the monster afforded is amply satisfying to the timid, and the venturesome see the curtain drawn, impressed. A discharged employee in a spirit of malice spread a tale of unexpected exposures. The fellow asserted that once the wild man was eagerly “shooting craps” with a colored canvasman, and a second time had hastily torn a clay pipe from his mouth and become again a weird, uncivilized being. The manager was very indignant over the infamous recital; and that very evening came a full exoneration. The wild man escaped. (Business had been unsatisfactory for several days.)
The alarm was sounded throughout the town and spread terror. We all said we feared the worst. Armed men were sent in pursuit. The fugitive was captured in a forest back of the lot and returned, shrieking, biting and fighting fiercely, to his den. Order was restored and the circus turned away a thousand persons for lack of room at the evening’s performance. The side-show was not empty of visitors for a month afterwards.
We retain the services of our wild man with some difficulty. His wife, a very indiscreet colored woman from Vermont, has a pernicious habit of appearing inopportunely and accusing our black prize of gambling away his wages and not providing for the support of his family. She is ample of form, emphatic in manner, and prodigal of words, and when she begins to bellow and boister, side-show proceedings stop abruptly and the overwhelmed orator hangs his diminished head and yields verbal supremacy. It is not until she receives from the management positive assurance of a cash advance that she can be persuaded to retreat. At these times the wild man is a very meek and subdued person, and no amount of urging will lure him from the security of his cage until his wife is well out of town.
The original circus wild man, the denizen of Borneo, was white, but his successors have almost invariably had dark skins. “Waino” and “Plutano,” exhibited together, are now before the public. “Tom” and “Hattie,” wild children from Australia, are dead. “Wild Rose” and “Wild Minnie” are still in the field of savage honor, as is “Old Zip, the What-is-it?” whose head is cone-shaped, and who utters mournful guttural sounds.