No feature of the side-show is more keenly relished in the country towns than the Punch and Judy show. The lecturer works the figures and carries on the dialogue. The movements of the puppets are managed simply by putting the hands under the dress, making the second finger and thumb serve for the arms, while the forefinger works the head. Punch’s high back, distorted breast and long nose give an increased zest to his witticisms, and his career of violent crime is followed with absorbed attention until he is dragged away to expiate it, and the curtain falls amid the shouts of his conqueror.
The freak business is divided into about three varieties, foreign, domestic and fake. In the first class, the collectors travel all over the world in search of rarities, but the very best freaks come from India and the Malay peninsula. In those countries there are people who breed freaks. They buy young children and animals and deform them while their bones are soft, by all manner of means. Then they are constantly on the lookout for genuine, natural freaks, and in those lands the birth of a freak occurs very frequently. The headquarters of this business is at Singapore. There are, too, a number of men who devote themselves to the discovering and placing of freaks of all kinds and varieties, and scarcely a day goes by in winter that we do not receive photographs and illustrated circulars from some freak merchant or other. Of course, there are faked freak men—a perfect host in themselves. If the proprietor of some little show needs an additional attraction and does not have any money to hire something good—for, like everything else, freaks have their price—he can get something for little money that will serve his purpose. The real, genuine, live freaks always command high prices—from $50 to $800 per week each—and travel all over the world in order to exhibit themselves.
CHAPTER VI
AT THE MAIN ENTRANCE
I have always regarded the two men who sell tickets with a feeling of profound awe and solemn wonder. There is something almost uncanny about their daily exhibition. Their flying hands put to shame the clutching display of the octopus. No quicker-brained, more resolute or more peculiarly gifted men are with the show. They face, undaunted and calm, twice a day, a scene of confusion, disorder and clamoring demand which would put to his heels one not fitted perfectly by nature and experience for the part. To see them working their hands with lightning rapidity, directing, advising and correcting, is to me as interesting a study as the whole passing show affords.
When the crowd begins to gather about the ticket wagon ready with the price of admission, it would make infinitely easier the work of the men inside if the sale began then. But business astuteness bids delay. The throng grows fast, fills the enclosure and swarms over the grounds. The side-show orator, meanwhile, directs his seductive eloquence at the perspiring mass and reaps a harvest. This is an advantage gained by no undue haste in distributing tickets.
While this preliminary maneuvring is very gratifying in its results to the management, the burden it accumulates upon the two anxious men in the ticket wagon grows every minute. When finally the signal to begin operations is given, they face a sea of upturned, distorted, perspiring faces, and aloft the air is peppered with hands brandishing admission money. Everybody is irrational, unreasonable and excited. Children cry, women are on the verge of collapse, and men push and strain and mutter strange oaths. Uniformed employees strive in vain to maintain order. The wheels of the red wagon have been buried to the hubs, or it would be swept away in the rush. The mad, violent struggle continues for an hour, and thousands force their path or are carried bodily to the window and labor away with the cherished strips of printed pasteboard. A mountain of bills and coin grows and is toppled into baskets at their side. Soon these are filled and money litters the floor. There is no chance to assort or collect it now. With eyes fixed steadily before them, fingers and hands never lingering or sluggish, but intercepting a counterfeit offering like a flash, they work as if human automatons. Not until solitary arrivals denote the end of the rush do they relax. Thousands of dollars have changed hands in the brief period, yet the scene will be duplicated a few hours hence and the day will record a balance as correct in detail as the most exacting banking institution’s.
There is a popular misapprehension about the moral purposes of the men in the ticket wagon. The impression seems to prevail among many sensible persons that they are modern highwaymen, lurking there for prey. An intimate knowledge of their character and conduct makes a definite denial only fair to them. In the swift shuffle of money, there is no intention on their part to take advantage of the circus’s patron. It is the fixed design of the management to inspire a feeling of security and confidence, and the selection of ticket-sellers has this end in view. Dismissal and possible criminal prosecution would be the penalty of detected “short change” or other swindling methods.
There is only one legitimate source of outside profit, and that is furnished by the “walkaway,” circus vernacular for the person who unconsciously leaves his change behind. He is legion, strangely enough, and more remarkable still, it seldom seems to occur to him to return for his own. When he does it is promptly given him. Ticket-sellers insist vehemently that the “walkaway’s” contribution is not more than enough to reimburse them for mistakes in count which are unavoidable in the tumult, and more frequently than not to the benefit of the purchaser. Whether their comrades accept this assertion without reservation is not a subject to be discussed here.