“You see, Mr. Circus man,” was the ready answer, “my church is on the county line. Yesterday you paid for desecrating the house of God in Lorain county. But you also profaned our sacred worshipping place in Cuyahoga county. I want damages now for the actual and religious injury done there.”
If we hadn’t been so prosperous, I know the owner wouldn’t have yielded. As it was, the unblushing effrontery of the thing appealed to his sense of humor, and he gave the man another fifty dollars. He told of the proceeding at dinner as a good joke at his expense, and remarked that, after all, he was not sorry to have had the chance to contribute to the finances of the struggling congregation. It might bring him good luck.
About three o’clock in the afternoon he told me to ascertain the whereabouts of the church—he had become curious about the shrewd preacher’s affairs—and we would drive out there. The church was about six miles away, through a lonely country district. We lost our way once and the circus owner was not in the best of humor when we arrived. The sight that greeted him knocked out all the exalted sentiment that had stirred him. The steeple of the building was on a level with the eaves, two cows browsed off the pulpit, there was evidence of the nocturnal presence of hens in the amen corner, and the whole edifice was in a state of dilapidation and decay. Along the entire front was an inch and a half accumulation of circus bills. Ours were the outside strata. The minister couldn’t be found, fortunately for his physical welfare. He was probably spending his booty. His wife told us the congregation had dissolved months ago, and our adroit questioning disclosed that the couple’s income consisted in a great measure of the money extracted from the circuses who, innocently, utilized the inviting stretch of ecclesiastical boards. The memory of the colored clergyman is still green with the circus man, and religion is at a discount with the show.
P. T. Barnum, in the early years of his life, had no modern press agent, but it is doubtful if the interesting person could have aided the showman in advertising his enterprises. No one knew better than he the value of printer’s ink, and of the men who made printer’s ink the vehicle of news and information. Old circus men recall an illustration of his unique but impressive way of attracting public attention in 1849, which would have done credit to this enlightened generation. He sent an expedition to Ceylon, a formidable undertaking then, to capture elephants. They returned to New York with ten of the animals, harnessed them in pairs to a chariot and drove up Broadway. Not content with this advertisement, he sent one of the elephants to his Connecticut farm and engaged the beast in agricultural pursuits. A keeper, clad in oriental costume, was the companion. They were stationed on a six-acre lot which lay close beside the tracks of the New York and New Haven railroad. The keeper was furnished with a timetable of the road with special instructions to be busily engaged in plowing, with the animal dragging the implement, whenever passenger trains passed. The proceeding made a sensation and the showman gravely announced that he intended to introduce a herd of elephants to do all his plowing and heavy draft work. After the six acres had been plowed over at least a hundred times, he quietly returned the animal to his museum.
It is related in the circus world that the “Feejee Mermaid” was the stepping-stone to Barnum’s road to wealth and circus renown. The thing was made in Japan with an ingenuity and mechanical perfection well calculated to deceive. Barnum bought it in 1842, when he was unknown, modified by printer’s ink the general incredulity as to the possibility of the existence of mermaids, and aroused great curiosity to see and examine his specimen. Then, too, he persuaded some naturalist to endorse it as genuine. The fame of his museum and its preserved curiosity was wafted from one end of the land to the other. Money flowed in rapidly and the notoriety he attained he never permitted to fade.
In the museum, the ladder by which he rose to fortune, Mr. Barnum a few months later perpetrated another humbug which arrested public attention. He purchased in Cincinnati, O., a well-formed, small-sized horse, with no mane and not a particle of hair on his tail, while his body and legs were covered with thick, fine hair or wool, which curled tight to his skin. The animal had been foaled in Ohio and was a remarkable freak of nature. The astute showman immediately advertised the beast as “The Woolly Horse.” The news had just come that Colonel John C. Fremont, who was supposed to have been lost in the snows of the Rocky Mountains, was in safety. Mr. Barnum grasped the opportunity and asserted that his horse had been captured by the explorer’s party. The curiosity was a great attraction for many months, and no definite exposure of the imposition was ever made. It added immeasurably to the reputation and pecuniary success of the establishment.
The circus press agent is a welcome visitor to the country newspaper office. In his gratitude over the influx of tickets and advertising, the editor generally devotes space to a eulogy of the social and professional merits of the visitor. Here are some truthfully reproduced specimens, taken at random from a collection:
“The bustling press agent of the vast concourse is the most popular man with the circus.”