Show III.
The inscription outside was,
Ball’s Theatre.
Here I saw a man who balanced chairs on his chin, and holding a knife in his mouth, balanced a sword on the edge of the knife; he then put a pewter plate on the hilt of the sword horizontally, and so balanced the sword with the plate on the edge of the knife as before, the plate having previously received a rotary motion, which it communicated to the sword and was preserved during the balancing. He then balanced the sword and plate in like manner, with a crown-piece placed edgewise between the point of the sword and the knife, and afterwards with two crown-pieces, and then with a key. These feats were accompanied by the grimaces of a clown, and succeeded by children tumbling, and a female who danced a hornpipe. A learned horse found out a lady in the company who wished to be married; a gentleman who preferred a quart of beer to going to church to hear a good sermon; a lady who liked to lie abed in the morning; and made other discoveries which he was requested to undertake by his master in language not only “offensive to ears polite,” but to common decency. The admission to this show was a penny.
Show IV.
Atkin’s Menagerie.
This inscription was in lamps on one of the largest shows in the fair. The display of show-cloths representing some of the animals exhibited within, reached about forty feet in heighth, and extended probably the same width. The admission was sixpence. As a curiosity, and because it is a singularly descriptive list, the printed bill of the show is subjoined.
“MORE WONDERS IN
ATKINS’S ROYAL MENAGERIE.
“Under the Patronage of HIS MAJESTY.
G.R.