Bobby Williams, Sam Lathrop, Sam Long, Joe Pentland, Billy Kennedy, Jimmy Reynolds, William Wallett, Frank Brown, Nat Austin, Herbert Williams, Dan Gardiner, Bill Worrell and Tony Pastor were other noted clowns and “Shakespearian jesters” of his day, and most of them are hale and hearty to this day. A press agent of their time, not behind his lavish-languaged modern brother, called attention to this group as “jolly, jovial representatives of Momus, whose fund of wit and humor has given them the proud titles of America’s greatest wits and punsters; scholarly, refined and every one fit to grace the proudest court as its greatest jester. Merrier men within the limits becoming mirth live not upon man’s footstool—this greatest earth.”
HUMILIATION OF THE KING OF BEASTS.
In the old days of the clown, when one ring furnished satisfying enjoyment, his was a very important and conspicuous part of the performance. His efforts of entertainment occupied the sole attention of the audience at times, as with voice or action he provided fun and folly. It was as a songster that he was at his best. Perched on a stool in the centre of the ring—thrown up of soil and not the portable wooden, forty-two foot diametered affair of to-day—his vocal enlivenments were a source of much laughter and merriment. Here is a type of the old-time clown song, which none who ever witnessed one of the shows will fail to recall:
I don’t mind telling you,
I took my girl to Kew,
And Emma was the darling creature’s name.
While standing on the pier,
Some folks did at her leer,
And one and all around her did exclaim: