The day was eminently successful from the circus standpoint. The newspapers told at great length of the accomplishment of the daring dive and its tragic ending, and the public curiosity to see the performer added materially to receipts. And best of all none of the reporters was so wanting in human charity as to reveal that, at the police station, the captain had refused to hold the prisoner, remarking grimly that no offence had been committed; and that the press agent, searching frantically through the book of ordinances that his scheme not miscarry at the end, had found that a penalty attached to the crime of disturbing the fish in the lake, and patient “Splash” was locked up on that charge. A small fine was promptly paid next day.
Read one press agent’s circus literature and begin to understand that the resources of the language are less limited than you suppose. He is the world-renowned alliterator of the show business. He is better known in the profession than Shakespeare, although Shakespeare never did much for circuses. He has no acknowledged rival in the successive use of the initial letter. The advance matter which he sends abroad for his “moral” enterprises where presumably only moral people are admitted, forms an extraordinary narrative.
During each winter he writes, writes, writes, writes, whether he feels right or not, but the annual incessant drain does not subtract from his elaborate eloquence. He tells of “real and royal races for reward, huge heroic hippodromes, genuine contests of strength, skill and speed, superb struggles for success and supremacy between the short and the stout, the tall and the tiny, the fat and the frail, the mammoth and the midget, the adipose and the attenuate, the large and the little, the massive and the minute, the swift and the slow; elephants in ponderous, pachydermic progress, camels in cross and comical cantering, horses in hurricane hustling for home, donkeys in deliberate, dragging, droning pace, monkeys in merry meanderings on meek and mild mules, whippets in whirlwind dashes swifter than a horse, runners in record reducing running in rivalry, ponies in carts with clowns for conductors, and the celebrated charioteer contestants of the Coliseum.”
FAIR EQUESTRIENNE ON HER FAVORITE HORSE.
Proceeding in his product, after this gaudy prologue, this adjective-millionaire is impressed with the “astral array of aerial artists. The very air is filled with their flying forms, describing the most intricate figures, far flights, swallow-like sweeps, gymnic gyrations, castings and catches, revolutions and returns, swings and somersaults, leapings and lightnings, soarings and sailings, altitudinous ascensions, diving descensions, keeping the dizzy heights of the lofty canvas dome alive with activity. Never before have the satiated public seen a spectacle to so surely stir their sluggish blood, arouse their admiration, excite their enthusiasm and command their applause.”
The clowns appeal to him. As phrased by him they are “a phenomenal phalanx of phantastical, phuriously phunny phellows; silly and sedate, short and stout, smile securers set scot free; loyal legion of long and lean laugh liberators let loose. These extraordinary experts in the creation of laughter have invented this year a new, novel, unique, irresistibly comic, excruciatingly funny and simply surprising series of skits, scenes, screaming sallies and silly situations.”
Danger is “defiantly defied by one audacious aerial athlete, whose deed is daring, desperate and death deriding, a fearless, fearful, fascinating feat, the veritable pinnacle of perillous performances.”
“Whirling Wonders of the World on Wheels” are “cycling champions in clubs and coteries, in single, double and tandem teams, in wheeling fads, fancy and freakish, in pictorial and picturesque peripatetic posturings.”
Proceeding, he describes the elephants as “mountains in motion, ponderous and perspicacious pachyderms, in marvellous, military manoeuvres.”