The table in front of the Arena.The Project Gutenberg EBook of Side Show Studies, by Francis Metcalfe This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: Side Show Studies Author: Francis Metcalfe Illustrator: Oliver Herford Release Date: November 19, 2007 [EBook #23542] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SIDE SHOW STUDIES *** Produced by Stephen Blundell and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
BY
ILLUSTRATED WITH MANY AMUSING DRAWINGS
BY OLIVER HERFORD
NEW YORK
THE OUTING PUBLISHING COMPANY
1906
Copyright, 1905 and 1906, by
THE OUTING PUBLISHING COMPANY
First impression, March, 1906
THE OUTING PRESS
DEPOSIT, N. Y.
| PAGE | |
| The Liberty of Franz and the Rebellion of Fuzzy Wuzzy | 1 |
| The Bite of a Rattler and the Sad Fate of Big Pete | 23 |
| The Amorous Baboon | 45 |
| Feeding the Serpents and a Grand Transformation | 67 |
| The Lioness Skirt Dance and the Inconsiderate Python | 89 |
| The Animal Barometer and the Eternal Feminine | 113 |
| Making a Star Lion and an Interrupted Temperance Meeting | 137 |
| Kalsomining an Elephant | 163 |
| The Hypnotic Bear and the Sentimental Lecturer | 183 |
| The Tragedy of the Tigers and the Power of Hypnotism | 211 |
Transcriber's Note
Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note. Dialect spellings have been retained. A list of illustrations, though not present in the original publication, has been provided below:
The table in front of the Arena.
Two French clowns and a performing dog.
"Things which Nature never intended them to do."
"Blank cartridges fired in his face."
"Five hundred dollars to any one who will enter the cage."
"A constant procession of small animals moving down his throat."
Noah listens to the tale of a Johnstown flood survivor.
"Just two little red dots on the back of his hand."
"He smoked his cigar in the lobby like any other guest."
"Jocko, giving a howl of rage, danced madly up and down."
"All of his savage instincts were aroused."
"A 'Tattooed Lady,' and she's all covered with picters."
"A procession of sandwich men."
"Brought the head of the cobra close to his face."
"You're a blame fine figure of a fat man."
"Now, if you'll kindly give me your attention."
"Looked like the pennant of a man-o'-war."
"Kicking over their heads and into their very mouths."
"Every one of the great beasts jumped for her."
"A howl of terror from the platform."
"There was a loose lion downstairs and a nurse and two children in the loft."
"His vanity got the better of him when he turned his back on the lion, to bow to the audience."
"Broncho was only a half-breed."
"We didn't have any regular snake charmer, but Merritt made himself up for a Hindoo fakir."
"Sam Watson confessed the whole thing."
"Walking upon its hind legs, BACKWARD."
"Forepaugh had eminent scientists examine the beast."
"Then Sam and his groom, Telford, proceeded to get busy."
"There seems to be a sympathy between them."
"Tramp was slowly drawing nearer to the cage."
"The bear sat comfortably on the seat beside me."
"He made sheep's eyes and threw a chest."
"The first tiger bounded through the door."
"Depew was still crouched on the body of his victim."
"Depew, coughing and choking, drew back."
"Merritt was quick enough to get a strangle hold around the snake's neck."
Madame Morelli, the pretty little Frenchwoman who makes a half-score of leopards, panthers and jaguars do things which nature never intended them to do, had finished her act and driven the snarling performers through the narrow runway to their separate cages, fastening each one, as she thought, securely. Two French clowns were filling in the time and making the audience of Coney Island pleasure seekers laugh by their antics with a performing dog, while the stage hands were bringing in the properties for the next trained animal act, when the Proprietor came from behind the scenes and strolled, apparently unconcerned, to the back of the Arena, where he could command a clear view of the performance, the audience[4] and the cages. He said a few words to each of the trainers and keepers whom he passed, and the Stranger, who knew the clock-like regularity with which each one of them went through his allotted duties, noticed an unwonted haste and suppressed excitement among them.
As he joined the Proprietor the sound of hammering mingled with the noise of the blatant brass band and the cries of the ballyhoo spielers for the other Dreamland attractions, which came in through the open windows, and he saw that Stevenson, the mild eyed quiet man who is always on hand to rescue imperiled trainers and keepers when their own carelessness, or unexpected revolt on the part of the animals, leads to a fight, was rapidly nailing boards over the ventilating spaces above the cages. Madam Morelli, whip and training rod in hand, hurried from her dressing room to the runway, and every keeper and trainer seemed to be loitering in the space between the leopards' den and the audience.
He looked at the Proprietor inquiringly,[5] but the little trickle of blood which ran down his cheek from under his cap answered the question he would have asked, an animal was loose and the Proprietor had encountered it in his rounds. A crash of weird music from the band drowned the sound of a cracking whip and sharp commands which came from the runway, and announced the appearance[6] of Brandu, the snake charmer, in the exhibition cage, and the audience watched him play with a cobra, all unconscious that Franz, the jaguar, which a few minutes before had desisted from his attempt to tear the fair shoulders of Morelli only after a dozen blank cartridges had been fired in his face, was a gentleman-at-large in Dreamland. The Proprietor gave a sigh of relief as the jaguar backed into his cage from the runway, snarling and striking at the little woman who forced him backward with the whip until she was able to slam the door and make him once more a prisoner. When she passed them on her way back to the dressing-room, her dress was torn, and her eyes were flashing from the excitement of the encounter and anger at the carelessness of the carpenter who had left a board loose at the top of the den.
"Of course, that might have been a serious thing for the jaguar and for my pocket book," said the Proprietor as three deep scratches in his head were being plastered up. "I couldn't afford to take any chances[7] of an accident, and he would have been shot if he had attempted to come through a ventilator into the Arena, but a trained animal like that is worth a goodish bit of money. He let me know he was loose by giving me his love pat when I was walking through the runway, and as Morelli is the only one who can do anything with him I sent for[8] her. She can whip considerably more than her own weight in wild-cats, and there was not the slightest danger to the audience, but not many men would have relished her task of going into that passage with the beast loose on top of the cages." He negatived the Press Agent's suggestion to make a scare-head story of the escape for the papers, and suggested that they should go up and hear Madam Morelli's account of it. She was sitting on the edge of her bed, mending a rip which the jaguar's sharp claws had made in her gown, and she shrugged her shoulders when the Stranger inquired if she had been hurt.
"It was nothing," she said laughing. "He jumped at me from the top of a cage when I came in, but I beat him off and whipped him back into his cage. It was only the close quarters which made it bad, for I am used to fighting them." She was interrupted by a yapping and caterwauling in the doorway, and sprang on the bed, her face white with terror, as a small terrier and the menagerie cat rolled into the room in a clawing, biting[9] mix-up. The terrier was raising a litter of puppies in the next room, and the cat had transformed the space back of Morelli's bed into a feline nursery, and a meeting of the two anxious mothers in the hall had led to trouble. Madam Morelli always goes through her performance in an evening dress, and she stood on the bed, her long train gathered closely about her, trembling like a leaf, when the Proprietor finally separated the combatants and restored peace.
"You wouldn't think that a woman who had just come from a fight with a two hundred pound jaguar, which could easily tear her to pieces, would be scared at a scrap between a toy terrier and a mongrel cat," said the Proprietor, laughing, as he led the way to the café table. "But she makes a specialty of the larger species."
"This matter of specialties seems to run through every branch of the show business," said the Press Agent as they took their seats at the table. "I ran a dime museum in St. Louis a few years ago—in those days there was lots of money in it—and the freaks[10] would never stand for any change in their billing. We used to have a fresh lot sent on by our New York agent every two weeks, and one Monday morning when I went down to look over the new arrivals, I knew that he had been up against the demon Rum, when he engaged such a tough looking bunch. The alleged fat woman looked as if she was wasting away with consumption, and the bearded lady had a way of absentmindedly humming the popular airs in a bass voice which gave the whole snap away. There was one likely looking girl and when I asked her what she was she told me she was the web-footed lady and showed me her feet, which had little pieces of skin growing between the toes.
"I knew that wasn't good enough, so I told her she was mistaken; that she was a Circassian beauty, and I gave her a wig and the fixings and put her on the platform. But say, would you believe it? She was so mad and embarrassed by the change in her stunt that when the lecturer was calling attention to her blond beauty, she would blush until[11] she looked like an Indian Princess, and every time he turned his back she would take off her shoes and wiggle her toes at the audience to show what she really was.
"It was up to us to get some real attraction to tide over the time until our agent[12] should get sober and send us another bunch of freaks, so Merritt, who was my partner, and myself hunted up a big buck nigger and made a deal with him to go on as a 'Wild Man.' We ripped up a hair mattress and glued the contents onto him, and wired a couple of big tusks to his teeth, and with an iron collar around his neck and a log chain around his waist he was as good an imitation as was ever faked. We put him in a big cage which we had used the week before for a mangy old lion; one of the five hundred or so 'Wallace the Untamables' which were touring the country, and Merritt taught him to howl like a steam calliope.
"We called him 'Fuzzy Wuzzy, the Terrible Man-Eating Cannibal,' which was a waste of words, but Merritt had language to burn. He had got hold of a phony five hundred dollar bill, and when he was giving his spiel about how Fuzzy Wuzzy was captured upon a desert island, where he was found chewing a human leg, and how he couldn't eat anything but raw meat, and was always trying to get at his keeper for dessert,[13] he would wave his phony five hundred spot over his head and give it to 'em good.
"'Five hundred dollars, ladies and gents, I will give to any man who will remain for the short space of two minutes in the cage with Fuzzy Wuzzy! Five hundred dollars to any man who is brave enough to run the risk of letting this terrible man-eating cannibal get his hinder limbs about him, for then all would be lost and Fuzzy Wuzzy would fasten his terrible fangs in his victim's throat and suck his ber-lud.'
"Well, it was a good spiel, all right, all right, and when Merritt struck that part one of the supers would prod up old Fuzzy, who would rattle his chains and howl for fair, and the audience would get cold chills down their backs. We were playing to the S. R. O., and giving so many shows a day that Merritt pretty nearly lost his voice, and Fuzzy had been prodded so much that he had to take his meals standing up. We ran 'em through pretty fast, and one afternoon Merritt was just going to give the 'All out' signal, which cleared the exhibition hall for[14] the next performance, when up steps a big husky black roustabout from the levee and commences to strip off his coat.
"'Jes' a minit, boss,' says he. 'Ah reckon ah needs dat five hundred in mah bizness,' and Merritt looks at him in astonishment.
"'My deluded colored brother,' says he, 'Do you appreciate the fact that you are going to a certain and horrible death? If this terrible Fuzzy Wuzzy gets his hinder limbs about you he will suck your ber-lud.'
"'Ah doan reckon he'll git me, an' ah suttenly needs de money,' answers the coon, and continues to strip, and Merritt sizes him up and sees the finish of Fuzzy Wuzzy, who was shaking the bars and trying to get away from the super who was prodding him; but everybody thought he was trying to get at the coon to make a meal of him, and some of the women folks were getting hysterics. One of the boys had put me wise, and I broke through the crowd and called a halt in the proceedings.
"'Ladies and gentlemen,' says I, 'I didn't believe that a man existed who was foolhardy[16] enough to be tempted to certain death by the lure of a paltry five hundred dollars. But although this man is so reckless of his own life, I must insist that he get a permit from the mayor, relieving us from all responsibility, before we allow him to be torn limb from limb. Return to-morrow at two o'clock, and if this man's courage still keeps up, you will see before your shuddering eyes an encounter which will make the historical gladiatorial combats of ancient Rome pale into insignificance.' I could sling a few language myself, those days, and the mayor was a friend of mine—or I thought he was—so I figured we could catch the suckers for an admission and then call it off, because he would refuse a permit.
"But he was onto the game and he was one of those blame fools who thought he had a sense of humor, so he gives him a document with a big red seal on it which looks like a doctor's diploma, which says that Thomas Jefferson is allowed to go in and win our five hundred, and the next day the coon shows up smiling and ready, and I knew we[17] had to make good somehow. I passed the word to Merritt to delay the game and make a last grand effort to throw a scare into the coon, and he put up a spiel to beat the band.
"'This terrible Fuzzy Wuzzy has none of the attributes of a human being,' says he. 'He lives upon raw meat and would prefer human flesh if he could get it. Observe the expression of ghoulish glee in his eyes as he regards the foolhardy man who will soon furnish him such a meal as he formerly enjoyed in his native jungle. He sleeps at night suspended from the top bars of his cage by his claw-like hands and feet, which will soon be tearing the flesh of this man who stands before you now, a picture of perfect health and strength. He speaks no intelligible language, but he utters howls and yells, which will be more horrible than ever before when he is sucking the warm heart's be-lud of the figure which you see before you for the last time in human shape.' Just then the super gives Fuzzy a prod and he howls like Balaam's ass, but the coon stands there smiling and not feazed a bit.[18]
"'It's a sad sight,' continues Merritt, 'to see a fine man in the prime of life, like our colored brother here, crushed into an unrecognizable mass by the terrible hinder limbs of this man-eating cannibal and then torn to shreds by his horrible fangs. The management of this highly moral and intellectual show will provide a funeral for the remains, if there are any, and now, ladies and gents, I call upon you to witness that we are not responsible for the terrible end which awaits this reckless man.'
"I had taken the precaution to button up the box office 'take' in my inside pocket, and while Merritt was making a bluff at looking for the key to the cage door I looked around to see that there was a free exit, for the coon was standing there swelling out his chest and grinning as if he had the five hundred already in his jeans, and I knew he couldn't be bluffed out. Just then a typical antebellum Missourian, one of the kind that has to be shown, steps up in front. He was tanked up until his safety valve would have blown off if it hadn't been wired down, but[19] he was pretty steady on his pins when he held onto the railing in front of the cage.
[20]"'Professah,' says he, 'did I undahstand yo' all correctly to say that this yeah object in the cage has none of the attributes of the human race?'
"'Correct!' says Merritt, glad of an excuse to delay things. 'He is lower than the beasts of the field.'
"'Well, he suttenly aint much to look at,' says the Southerner, looking him over carefully. 'He won't eat like folks—he can't talk—an' he sleeps like a bat. I dunno why such a pusillanimous critter should cumber the yearth,' and with that he puts his hand to his hip and pulls out a forty-five from under the tails of his coat. Fuzzy takes one look at it, and it didn't need any prodding to make him holler, and he tries to tear off the false tusks.
"'Foh Gawd's sake, mistah, doan shoot!' he yells. 'Dat white mahn's been tellin' a passel ob lies about me until ah's sartain suah somefing gwine fer to git me. Ah can eat an' talk like any one, an' mos' ebery one[21] knows me about yeah wen ah ain't got dese yeah contraptions on.'
"'Shut up, you blame fool!' says Merritt. 'He won't shoot you.'
"'Mebbe he knows dat, mebbe you knows dat; but how does I know dat?' yells Fuzzy. 'Dat gun suttenly looks big to me.'
"About this time the other coon got wise and saw the five hundred vanishing, and the last I saw of Merritt he was trying to break a half-Nelson that the coon had got on him and dodge the rest of the crowd at the same time. I left St. Louis on a freight that night, wearing a few lumps where some stray brickbats landed, and the next time I saw Merritt was in Chicago, and he was on crutches and had his head covered with plaster."
No thunderbolt dropped from the blue dome over the Dreamland tower, and the Proprietor, with a childlike and bland smile on his face, motioned to the waiter to refill the glasses.
Like the pitcher which went to the well until it met the proverbial fate, the trainer entered the lion's den once too often, and what remained of him was placed in an ambulance and taken to the hospital. After the performance for the evening was over, Baltimore, the bad lion, who had suddenly developed a craving for human flesh, had been dealt with by the Proprietor of the menagerie in a manner which would spoil his appetite for many a day to come and make him remember that trainers cannot be mangled with impunity.
Most of the lights were extinguished at Dreamland, but two men sat at the table in front of the Arena with the Proprietor, discussing the accident and listening to stories of former encounters which he related.[26] His own body bears the scars of many a battle with his savage charges, but he has discontinued giving personal exhibitions with them in the large cage, because his wife has developed a prejudice against having him brought to her in fragments, and he has found that the training of trainers is a far more difficult task than the education of wild animals.
"Yes, any man who follows this business carries his life in his hands," he said in answer to a question from the Stranger within the gates. "You helped to care for poor Bonavita to-night, after Baltimore finished with him, so you know what a lion's jaws can do. I've seen 'em chewed up as bad as that and get over it, but they never get quite the same again. Leave the business? No; it is like the sea: a man who takes to it keeps it up until the time comes when he doesn't recover, but after a bad accident he usually takes another breed of animals.
"The worst sight I ever saw was about five years ago, when one of our performing bears turned on its trainer and seized[27] his arm. He worried it as a terrier would a bone for a good twenty minutes before we could drive him off, and the bear died from the punishment we gave him. The man's arm isn't much use to him now, but he is crazy for me to give him another group of animals to train, which I can't do because a man needs two good pairs of limbs when he gets into the exhibition cage." He told of many accidents which had happened to himself and his employees, most of them through their own carelessness, born of constant association with their charges who never[28] miss the opportunity which the shortest instant of forgetfulness gives them.
"I said that bear attack was the worst sight I ever saw, and it was; but something happened here last year which impressed me more because it was so mysterious. A friend of mine in Florida shipped me a box of rattlers, which he wrote had been 'attended to,' and I supposed that their poison fangs had been extracted. They were delivered just before the performance started and I ripped a board off the box and stuck my hand in, grabbing them one by one and throwing them into the den as if they were garter snakes.
"The man who took care of the snakes was out on the ballyhoo, walking around with the gander following him to advertise the show; and when he came in he looked them over and found that each one had as pretty a pair of fangs as you would wish to see. He told me about it and I confess that it gave me a gone feeling in the pit of my stomach, for I remembered how I had felt around for them in the box with my bare hands.[29]
"I am pretty busy while a performance is going on, so I told him to let them alone until I had a chance to examine them. Ninety per cent. of the accidents which occur in a menagerie comes from the disregard of ordinary precautions or the disobedience of orders, and I had a presentiment that something was going to happen and I was keeping an extra vigilant eye on the performers in the big exhibition cage. Well, it happened, all right; but not in the way that I expected.
"The snake man instead of getting back on the ballyhoo where he belonged, stood around the snake cage, watching the new rattlers, and along came a couple of gazabos who commenced talking about them. One of them was the wise guy, who always knows about how the animals are doped so they won't bite and all that other information which isn't so. He commenced explaining how the snakes were harmless, because their teeth had been pulled, and giving a lot of misinformation about them. The snake man listened until he couldn't stand it any[30] longer and then he stuck his hand into the cage and grabbed one of the rattlers by the neck.
"'Fangs pulled, eh?' says he, and he made the rattler open his mouth and show a perfect pair of stingers. The wise guy took one look at them and fled, and the snake man would have carried it off all right, only he was so busy calling a few choice names after him that he placed the snake back in the cage instead of throwing it in, and the rattler struck him before he could draw his hand out. He had a clown make-up on, so I couldn't tell whether he was pale or not when he came to me a few minutes later and held out his hand, but there was a queer expression on his face and I knew that my apprehensions had not been groundless.
"There were just two little red dots, no bigger than pin heads, on the back of his hand.
"'You got it, didn't you?' says I.
"'Good and plenty,' says he. 'My arm hurts me already.'
"We got busy right away and took him up[32] to the hospital where Bonavita is now. Say, he was a very thin man and you can see that I'm no lightweight; but by midnight the right side of his body and his right arm and leg were swollen to my size, and in the morning all of the swollen part was as black as a coal. He was suffering terribly, and I tried to get hold of the Arab snake doctor but couldn't locate him, so I wired to Rochester for Rattlesnake Pete. He came down and a mighty interesting man he is, but he couldn't do anything which 'Doc' up at the hospital hadn't done, and it was five days before my man was out of danger. He was not a drinking man—I finished having drunkards around my show a good many years ago—and the whiskey took right hold of him and pulled him through. 'Doc' kept squirting some red stuff into his arm, but it was the 'red-eye' which saved him—and that reminds me."
He beckoned to the waiter and each one ordered his favorite antidote for a possible snake bite.
"Did he return to the show?" asked the[33] Stranger, after he had rendered himself immune.
"He sure did; you couldn't keep him away, but he has never been fond of snakes since. It is the same man whom you saw putting the group of elephants through their paces to-night."[34]
It was growing late, and the Proprietor announced that he was going to show his wife a good husband and said good-night, but the Stranger waited for the story which he saw was trembling upon his companion's lips, and induced the sleepy waiter to bring a farewell dose of snake-bite antidote. The man was unknown to him by name, but his personality promised to be interesting, for his face spoke of good living, the red of his complexion was evidently not entirely due to exposure to the sun, and the little sacs under the eyes indicated that he was apt to be the last of a convivial party to suggest breaking up.
He had listened to the Proprietor's stories with the same bored expression which Noah might wear in hearing the experiences of a survivor of the Johnstown flood, and he looked regretfully at the vacant chair, now that his turn had come.
"Snakes!" he exclaimed with a contemptuous snort. "What does the boss know about 'em? I used to own the only snake that was worth having. Ever hear of[35] 'Big Pete'?" The Stranger confessed his ignorance, and the other settled back in his chair and lighted a fresh cigar.
"I'll tell you about him, then. You know that a snake is a queer proposition in a menagerie. They get sore mouths—canker the fakirs call it—and won't eat, and then, if you've got any investment in 'em you want to get it out mighty quick, for they are no orchids. I was pretty well on my uppers, after a bad season on the road, when a guy named Merritt came to me and said he could get a fine snake cheap, and he thought we might make some money out of him by showing him to the Rubes at the county fairs.
"What I didn't know about snakes would have filled a book, but when I saw this one I knew it was a bargain. It was the blamedest biggest snake that ever gave a wriggle, and the only reason its owners had not made a fortune was because it was never properly advertised. I used to know just how much he weighed and how long he was, but my brain got so tired figuring up the money we[36] made out of him that I've had no memory for figures since.
"Well, as I said, I was pretty hard up, but I had this sparkler left for 'fall money,' and when I saw that snake I pushed it over my uncle's counter." He pointed to a large yellow diamond in his scarf, and the Stranger tried to make a mental calculation of a pawnbroker's valuation of it.
"Merritt managed to dig up some mazuma, and we chipped in fifty apiece and became the proud possessors of Big Pete. If I had been wise to the business I would have known there was something wrong to make him sell so cheap, but we more than got our money back out of him the first week, so we had no kick coming. The newspaper boys were good to us and gave us a lot of space, and we were playing on velvet and had Pete besides. It was such a cinch that Merritt, who looked after the snake while I did the spieling and sold tickets on the front, commenced to get worried for fear we should lose him.
"'Jim,' says he to me one morning when[37] business was a little dull, 'I believe there's something phony about the blame snake. He won't eat and I've tempted him with the best I could get. I guess I'll run down to the Bowery and get one of those snake sharps to come up and have a look at him; I believe his teeth need filling.'
"I knew he was stuck on a girl that was doing a turn in a music hall down that way, but business was dull, so I let him go without raising a holler. The next day he comes back with a jaw-carpenter who claimed he knew all about snakes and when he gets through looking at Pete's mouth we felt pretty blue.
"'Canker!' says he. 'Your little snakelet may live a month.'
"Well, that put it up to us to get busy, so I did the spieling on the outside until my voice gave out, and Merritt lied on the inside until he was black in the face, telling the Rubes about how many sheep old Pete swallowed every week. We had a lot of rabbits and doves with him in the cage, hopping and flying around behind the thick glass front, and they were real sociable with old Pete, who never batted an eye at 'em. At the end of the month he was looking pretty thin and we were afraid he would peg out any day. It was hard luck on us, for things were coming our way and our bank rolls were getting good and plenty thick and they were all[39] 'yellow boys,' from the case card to the wrapper. Our wads grew fatter as Pete grew thinner, and we were looking for some easy mark to unload him onto, when one morning Merritt comes running out, just as I was staving off a farmer who had heard him lie and brought around a flock of scabby sheep to sell to us for snake food.
"'Jim,' he yells, grabbing me by the shoulders and waltzing around like a whirling dervish, 'we'll make Vanderbilt and Rockefeller look like thirty cents; old Pete has swallowed every blame pigeon and rabbit in the coop.'
"It seemed too good to be true, but when I went to have a look there was not a feather nor a piece of fur to be seen and old Pete was examining all the corners of the cage to see that he hadn't overlooked a bit. He looked a whole lot better already, and Merritt and I began to discuss what we should do with all our money.
"But say, there was one thing we forgot to reckon on—the appetite he had been saving for about a year, and although the[40] money came in faster than ever, most of it went out to the rabbit men and pigeon fanciers.
"You know that when a snake swallows an animal you can see the bulge in him for a long time, but you couldn't see any in old Pete. He was just the same size all the way from his nose to the tip of his tail, for there was no space between the animals.
"Things began to look pretty serious for us, for we had used up all the available small live stock in the surrounding country, and the Rubes got onto the fact that we were up against their game and raised the ante on us for what was left. It's like taking candy from a child to sell a gold brick to a farmer, but he everlastingly gets back at you if you have to buy any of his produce. Hungry Joe and the man who invented the green-goods game would be skinned to death if they had to buy a dozen eggs from one of 'em.
"And all the time old Pete kept a constant procession of small animals moving down his throat, regardless of expense, and[41] if the supply ran short he would look at Merritt so reproachfully that it made him feel so bad he couldn't deliver his lecture for sobs. He worked the pathetic on him, but if I came around there was no 'Only three grains of corn, mother,' expression on his face; he would just rear up on his tail and lambaste that glass trying to get at me. I had been living pretty well during our prosperity and I guess I looked good to him, so rather than have any hard feelings about it I stuck closer than ever to the front of the house.
"We had rented a frame building in a little town up on the Hudson and were showing him off in good form. Business was rushing and we had the S. R. O. sign out all the time, but snake food was getting scarcer than boiled lobsters during the cold snap last winter. The show had closed up for night and we were trying to make dents in the front of the tavern bar with our breast bones and laying in a stock of supplies, in case old Pete should bite us.
"While we were discussing the best way[42] to stimulate the rabbit-breeding industry, 'biff—boom—bang,' went the town bell and the barkeep commenced to peel off his coat and get into a red flannel shirt and a fireman's helmet. It was one of those towns where they have a dude volunteer fire department, which the boys all join for the socials in the winter and to look pretty on the annual parade day. Merritt and I didn't hurry any; we knew that it would take some time for the chief, who kept the town drug store, to get into his red shirt and shiny boots and select the bouquet to carry in the big end of his speaking trumpet. Pretty soon, 'Always Ready, Ever Faithful, Hose Company Number One,' which comprised the department, came down the street, all of the company shouting orders through trumpets at the two coons who were pulling the cart.
"Of course, we went along to see the 'Fighting the Flames' show, but say: the joke was on us, for it was our theater which provided it. There wasn't anything left to burn and the hose company marched proudly back. Poor old Pete was nothing[43] but a heap of ashes and Merritt looked sorrowful.
"'Jim,' says he, 'let's copper the rabbit market before they get wise.'"
"Did you have no insurance?" asked the Stranger sympathetically.
"Not a blame cent," replied his companion as he rose to go to bed. "But I am making good money out of old Pete yet. I had him stuffed and get a hundred a week from a dime museum for him—and they furnish the feed."
Thanks to the busy Press Agent, the fame of Jocko the Jealous, the amorous baboon, had preceded him to America, and when the animals from the Paris Hippodrome had been safely transferred to their dens in the Arena at Dreamland he was the center of attraction as he limbered up his muscles in the large monkey cage, after the cramped accommodations of the small traveling box. He had gained a reputation as a masher in Paris; but never had the menagerie attendants seen him so madly in love and so insanely jealous as upon his first introduction to American beauty, as exemplified by the fair woman who stood before his cage.
Jocko was not the first male being who had been fascinated by the charms of the Prima Donna during her career; for she had[48] been through the marriage ceremony so often that she could say it backwards, never forgetting to cross her fingers before saying, "Until death do us part." The Proprietor drew the Stranger's attention to the group before the cage, a mischievous smile on his face as he looked over the half dozen of callow youths who are always in the train of the Prima Donna.
"Watch out for squalls over there," he said. "Jocko is affectionate now, but there will be something doing in a few minutes." The monkey was using all of the blandishments known to an amorous baboon and although the words of his soft chattering were unintelligible, their import could not be mistaken by a past mistress of the gentle art of love making; but the Prima Donna could not be beguiled into placing herself within reach of the hairy paws. Suddenly his mood changed, for one of her male companions placed his hand on her arm to attract her attention and Jocko, giving a howl of rage, danced madly up and down on all fours, showing a vicious set of fangs as his[50] lips curled back in a hideous snarl. The bars of his cage were strong and so close together that he could not get out to attack his rival; but he gathered up a mass of litter from the floor and showered Prima Donna and callow youth alike. His screams echoed through the Arena and caused even the majestic lions and the haughty tigers to look in the direction of the cage of the despised "Bandar Log," and made the smaller animals uneasy. The woman who was described on the programme as "Miss ——, Famous Society Woman," had torn herself away from her arduous social duties with the Four Hundred to exhibit a troupe of leopards to a Coney Island audience, her identity concealed by a small black mask, and her performance in the big cage was interrupted by the noise; so the Proprietor thought it time to interfere.
The Prima Donna laughed good-naturedly as he helped to brush the sawdust and litter from her dress and tactfully drew her away, and Jocko quieted down and implored her to return; but she was accustomed to[51] gentler wooing, and refused to put her dainty gown again in jeopardy.
"Jocko gave quite a performance to-night," said the Proprietor as he joined the Press Agent and the Stranger at the table, after the show. "That baboon is crazy about women; but he hasn't the discrimination of Consul, the most intelligent monkey that ever lived. You may remember that he was never quiet in his cage, but if a specially well-dressed woman stopped in front of it he played entirely to her and when she moved away his eyes followed her as long as she was in sight."
"There will never be another like Consul," said the Press Agent, shaking his head sadly. "He made my job a sinecure, for he was good for a column any day and a full page on Sundays."
"Never until the Missing Link is discovered," replied the Proprietor. "I don't believe a more human monkey will ever be found, and I attribute his wonderful intelligence to the fact that he associated entirely with human beings, almost from the day of[52] his birth. I got him from the captain of a tramp steamer which traded to the West Coast, and I paid a goodish bit of money for him too. I have never dared to tell his early history as it was told to me, for fear I should be laughed at for a liar; but stranger things happen in the animal business than ever get into print, and if I dared risk my reputation by telling the things which actually occur in a menagerie, I should never need a Press Agent; but a plausible lie is accepted where a truth which sounds improbable is turned down."
The Press Agent looked at him reproachfully, but agreed with the proposition.
"Do you know, I have found that to be true when I have visited the newspaper offices," he said. "I have actually had to embroider some of the accounts of things which have happened here."
"I suspected it, for I didn't recognize some of the stories when I saw them in print," answered the Proprietor, smiling at him approvingly. He consented to tell the history of Consul, the famous chimpanzee,[53] when the Stranger expressed his entire credulity and the Press Agent assumed an encouraging and sympathetic attitude.
"Of course, I have to take the ship captain's word for what happened before I bought him, but from the way the chimp developed and the intelligence he displayed[54] after he came into my possession, I am prepared to believe it. He told me that he got him from the natives at the mouth of a small river on the West Coast, where he anchored his steamer to trade. They came off about the ship in their canoes, but he did not care for the rubber and ivory they had to offer and he was about to hoist anchor when one of them, who was in a small canoe with a woman, motioned to him to stop. The woman was crouched up in the stern, nursing what the captain thought was a baby, but when the man dragged it away from her, in spite of her voluble protest, he saw that it was a small chimpanzee. The man seemed desperately anxious to trade—and I imagine the captain's trade goods were not the sort to meet the entire approval of the missionaries—so that a bargain was concluded and the woman's grief allayed by a generous share of the purchase price. As nearly as he could make out, she had found the little thing in the jungle when it was only a few days old and had reared it in place of a baby which had just died. She was a low type of[55] woman, even for an African savage, but the maternal instinct was strong enough to make her grieve for little Consul, as the captain christened him. The monkey grieved over the separation, too, but sailors make much of animals and he soon became reconciled to it.
"Thousands of people saw him after I purchased him, and you can judge of the reputation he attained when I tell you that I was getting fifteen hundred dollars a week for him in Berlin when he died, and he was booked for the entire season at that price. People had seen him eat with a knife and fork, smoke a cigar, use a typewriter and do all of the stunts which simply aped humanity, but you had to live with the little beast to appreciate how intensely human he was. Everybody connected with the show loved him, and when I wanted to find any one of the employees who was off duty, or not in his proper place, I always went first to Consul's cage and I was pretty sure to locate him. That monkey was never still, and the things he would do and the pranks he would[56] play off his own bat were more amusing than any of the things he had been taught.
"When he was in company he was as well mannered as most men, but, of course, he had his prejudices and had to be watched. His special aversion was a negro, which is strange when you consider his early associations, and if one came around when he was loose he was apt to attack him. We had to consider that in traveling, for Consul always stopped at the hotels with his trainer and sat about the lobbies, smoking his cigar like any other guest, but if there were negro servants about, we had to be very careful not to let them come near him.
"He had the reasoning power of a child of ten years old; he was patient when anything was wrong and we had to do disagreeable things to him, appreciating that it was for his benefit. Only once did we have to use force, when it was necessary to pull a tooth, and I am glad it wasn't oftener, for it took seven men to control him and they thought they had done a day's work when we finished. The last time he went abroad he was[57] the life of the ship, but he pretty nearly killed himself. The doctor prescribed a cough medicine for him and Consul liked it so well that he got up in the night, after his trainer had gone to sleep, opened the valise in which it was kept and emptied the bottle. I guess there must have been laudanum in it, for they had to work over him the rest of the night to save him.
"He would walk the deck with the lady passengers, who made a great deal of him, and when the customary concert was given, nothing would do but that he must perform and then pass the plate for the collection. He was in evening dress and behaved like a perfect gentleman, and the collection was a large one. It was heaped on the plate, and he was just about to present it to the captain when Booker Washington stepped forward to make a contribution. The money for the Seaman's Home went flying to the four corners of the salon and the trainer had a difficult time in persuading Consul to retire without tearing the clothes off of the man whose only offense was his color. This was Consul's last voyage, for he contracted pleurisy and died in Berlin, and I felt worse over his death than I did over the burning of my whole menagerie in Baltimore a few years ago."
"Have you found that early association with human beings makes the other animals easier to train?" asked the Stranger, and the Proprietor shook his head.[59]
"No; I would rather train one taken in the jungle than an animal born in captivity. They do raise the pumas in South America and have them about the houses as we do cats; but I wouldn't trust one of 'em. And as for the bigger cats, the lions and tigers, there is no such thing as taming them. They may be trained to do certain things, but they are never trustworthy. We had a queer illustration of that when I was traveling with a caravan circus in France. One of the lionesses had a litter of three cubs, and in the excitement of the moving and strange surroundings, she killed two of them. We took the other one away and the woman who cooked for us volunteered to raise it. She became very much attached to it and developed the theory that she could overcome its savage instincts by diet, and for a time it looked as if she were right. The beast was with her for about two years and grew to a fine animal, but she never let him taste raw food. One day, when he was comfortably lying before the stove, she pushed him with her foot to get him out of the way and he[60] resented it. Whether it was that alone, or whether the odor of meat which she was about to cook appealed to him, I don't know; but all of his savage instincts were aroused and when we secured him we found that he had taken most of her scalp off."
"It's funny how some people are always looking for a chance to get damages," said the Press Agent, settling himself comfortably in his chair. "We had a case of it when Merritt and I were running a dime museum out West. The freaks all lived together at a large boarding house and one morning, when they reported for duty, the 'Tattooed Lady' was missing. It was before the days when they were so common and we had spent a lot of money to have her decorated and made her our star attraction. Of course, none of the tattooing was visible when she was in street costume, but when she sat on the platform dressed in low neck and short skirts the lecturer had something to talk about, for the menagerie pictured on her was a thing of beauty, and the few choice texts like, 'Be good and you will be happy,'[61] which were scattered in between the animals, were highly moral and elevating, and that was one of the strong points of our show. Merritt used to spread himself when he was telling how she was shipwrecked on a desert island and held captive by the cruel cannibals, whose high priests spared her from the[62] menu to tattoo her with the symbols of their heathenish worship. It gave him a great chance to come in strong on the moral part, when he explained about the texts and told how they were added after the cannibals had been converted to red flannel shirts, silk hats and a vegetable diet, by the missionaries, and I have seen ancient maiden ladies moved to tears by his recital. So when he had to give his lecture without her, he got mixed up and called attention to the marvelous growth of hair on the face of the 'Circassian Beauty,' thinking she was the 'Bearded Lady,' and nearly pulled the ears off of the 'Dog Faced Boy,' trying to explain that he was 'The Man With The Rubber Skin.' Of course, that made trouble among the freaks, who are a mighty touchy lot anyway, and I have noticed that trouble always comes in bunches in the show business, so I wasn't surprised when a husky guy that looked like a farmer came in with blood in his eye and asked for the manager. I looked around for Merritt, but he had gone around the corner to get something to drown his sorrow, so[63] I slipped a piece of lead pipe under my coat and acknowledged the soft impeachment.
"'Look'ee here, wot kinder a skin game be youse fellers runnin' here?' says the guy, and I took a good grip on the lead pipe and tried to turn away wrath by a soft answer, and quoting from our advertisement that it was a highly moral and intellectual entertainment.
"'Not by a dern sight, it ain't,' says he. 'It's a blasted man-trap to ketch the unwary, an' I'll have the law on ye an' make yer pay fer trifling with my young affections.' I have had some pretty tough things said to me in my day, but that was about the worst ever, and pretty nearly took my breath away, but he went right on.
"'I deliver milk to that boardin' house down the street an' I see a likely lookin' gal there lately an' I wanted some one to help milk an' look after the house, so I asks her to marry me. She says she will, so we hitched up an' I never knew she was one o' yer dern freaks until it was too late. She[64] says she's a "Tattooed Lady," an' she's all covered with picters.'
"'Well, what's the matter with 'em?' says I. 'Aren't they good pictures?'
"'Good enough,' says he, 'for them as likes 'em; but I don't hanker after no decorations o' that kind an', b'gosh, I'll make yer pay fer palmin' off a damaged article on me. She's all over snakes an' other beasts an' it makes me sick ter my stummick every time I thinks of 'em.' I tried to convince him that we were not responsible and that it was his wife's duty to have informed him.
"'That's what I told her, dod gast her! But she says it's my own fault if I didn't know she was a "Tattooed Lady," because I never asked her, an' blamed if she isn't proud o' them picters, too.'"
"How did you settle it—did he get damages?" asked the Stranger.
"Damages!" exclaimed the Press Agent as he wiped the foam from his moustache. "Why, Merritt came in, and when he heard the guy's kick he lit right into him.
"'Blame your skin!' he yelled. 'I've a[65] good mind to have you arrested for stealing the pictures from my art gallery. I have a claim on 'em, for I paid for the liquor to keep a sailor drunk for six weeks while he was doing that job.' The Rube got onto the fact that she was valuable, so they adjourned to a saloon to talk it over."
"With what result?" asked the Proprietor, as he rose from the table.
"Well, Merritt got her back on the platform, the Rube sold his farm, and within six weeks he was wearing more yellow diamonds and throwing a bigger chest than the husband of a grand opera prima donna."
The animals had received their evening meal when the Proprietor came from the Arena and joined the Stranger and the Press Agent at the table outside.
"I can never understand the interest people take in seeing the carnivorous animals fed; it is no more than giving a bone to a dog," he said, as he took his seat. "And yet it is one of the best drawing features of the show, and the same people remain night after night to see the meat poked into the cages. If it were not for the prohibition of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals I could give a feeding exhibition which would be novel and interesting, for comparatively few people have ever seen a snake eat.
"It is because a snake will not eat unless[70] it kills its own food," he continued in answer to a question from the Stranger. "Snakes are more particular feeders than any other animals, and they will not touch anything which is not alive when it is brought to them. This is the night for feeding them, and if you care to remain until the crowd has gone you can see how it is done. Long as I have been in the business, I learn something new every day, and I never saw a cobra fed artificially until last week, when Brandu, my Hindoo snake charmer, received one direct from India. It seems that they are cannibal snakes and live upon their own kind in India, but that would be too expensive a diet here, and he forces feed down its throat."
The thousands of incandescent lights on the Dreamland tower went out—the signal that the barkers might cease from barking and the spielers spiel no more—until the morrow brought its fresh crowd of amusement seekers, and the Proprietor led the way into the Arena. Brandu and his two native assistants were carrying the boxes which contained the snakes into the big exhibition[72] cage, and, when the three men joined them, the weirdness of the surroundings made a profound impression upon the Stranger. All of the lights in the Arena were extinguished, with the exception of the small cluster directly over their heads, and pairs of luminous spots from the great semicircle of cages at the outer edge of the building reminded him that the human beings in the cage were not the only interested spectators of the proceedings.
The assistants carefully removed the great boas and pythons from the boxes, laying them on the floor, where they crawled lazily about, their delicate forked tongues vibrating like streaks of red flame, while Brandu removed a slat from a crate of rabbits and put a half-dozen of them on the floor. The little animals had no instinctive fear of the serpents, for they hopped about among them and over their wriggling bodies unconcernedly, but the snakes were hungry after a fast of two weeks and they wasted no time in getting to the business before them. The proceeding was the same in each[73] case. A serpent would crawl up to the rabbit and place its nose, at which the little furry beast would sniff curiously, close to that of its prospective supper. The red forked tongue would pass rapidly over its face and the rabbit made no attempt to move. Whether it was the effect of some anæsthetic quality in the breath of the snake or the traditional charm of the serpent, it was hard to say, but the rabbit made no move to escape. Slowly but surely it yielded to the fascination of the snake, the large transparent ears dropped to the side of the head and the body muscles relaxed until the tickling of the serpent's tongue caused no reflex movement of the paws.
The snake then carefully withdrew its head until the slim neck was in the form of a letter S, and when it again straightened out it was with the force of a released steel spring and the aim of the flat head was unerring. The stroke was so rapid that it was difficult for the eye to follow and the rabbit never knew what happened, for its body made a quick circle in the air and in less than[74] a second all that was to be seen was one small paw protruding from the coiled body which had brought it a quick and merciful death. The jaws of the serpent have seized it by the snout and thrown it back into its coils and the first pressure kills it, although the ever tightening embrace continues until the bones are crushed within the unbroken skin, so that it can be easily swallowed.
It is not swallowing in the ordinary sense of the word, for the snakes pull themselves over the rabbits as a glove is pulled over the finger, and the progress to the stomach can be watched through the length of the snake's neck. The snakes which were too small to manage a rabbit were fed on white rats and mice, but the process was the same in each case, except that the Hindoos held the rodents by their tails until the snakes had hypnotized them.
"I suppose that this seems cruel to people because the rabbits are such harmless little beasts," said the Proprietor as the last bit of fur disappeared. "To my mind it is not half so cruel as hunting hares with guns and[76] dogs, for death from the snake's blow is as quick and painless as that from a bullet, and there are no maimed and wounded animals to drag themselves away to lingering deaths in hiding. But now I will show you something which has never been known in this country."
One of the natives brought out a curiously woven circular basket which he handled with great care, and setting it in the middle of the cage retired to a respectful distance. Brandu crouched on the floor beside it, and, although the performance was not accompanied by the weird Oriental music which signaled the public appearances of the snake charmer, the tense expression of his face and the uncanniness of the surroundings made it sufficiently impressive, for he was about to handle the cobra de capello, the most venomous snake in all the great collection. He wasted no time in the pantomime and incantation of the ring performance, but quickly threw off the cover, and when the hooded head arose swaying above the edge of the basket, he started a[77] low whistling and passed his slim brown hands with lightning rapidity above it. He was absolutely fearless, but the task before him demanded the concentration of all his thoughts and he seemed unconscious of the startling interruption of a fight between two of the lions, and the shouts and pistol-shots of the keepers who separated them.
He never removed his gaze from the head of the serpent and his hands moved so rapidly that they were almost invisible until, quicker than a snake could strike, one of them darted down and caught the slim neck behind the distended hood. He gave a sharp exclamation of triumph and sprang to his feet, the cobra coiling its body about his bare brown arm and giving every indication of rage.
"I am always glad when that part of the performance is over," said the Proprietor with a sigh of relief. "Of course, it is all in the day's work with Brandu and he has done it thousands of times, but some day he will be a fraction of a second too slow and then—well, I shall have to get another snake[78] charmer. Watch him now and you will see something which only the men of his caste can do."
Brandu's white teeth glistened as he smiled at the Proprietor and pointed first to his own eyes and then to those of the serpent. He brought the head of the cobra close to his face, his expression became fixed and stern and the pupils of his widely opened eyes, which had been dilated until the iris was but a narrow rim, contracted to the size of pin heads. The cobra gazed at him fixedly and the tense body slowly uncoiled from his arm and hung limp and motionless, and Brandu laid it on the floor as lifeless and inert as a piece of rope. One of his assistants handed him a glass containing a couple of raw eggs and, handling it as carelessly as if it were a harmless garter snake, he picked up the cobra and forced a tube of polished bamboo between its jaws. When he had poured the eggs through the tube he withdrew it and carefully replaced the snake in the basket, still apparently lifeless; but bending over he blew sharply into[80] its face and the cobra was instantly reanimated into five feet of viciousness. Its head reared up above the edge, the spectacled hood distended in anger, but Brandu quickly clapped on the cover and the snake feeding was finished for two weeks.
"That is a great performance of Brandu's," said the Press Agent, "but it profits us nothing because the best part of it cannot be shown to the public. I never see a snake fed without thinking of something which happened when I was running a side show with the Greatest Show on Earth.
"You know that the dime museum business was run to death while the craze lasted in this country, and freaks got so common that you couldn't throw a stone in the streets of any large city without hitting one of 'em. When the fickle public tired of giving up its dimes to see 'em, a guy named Merritt and myself had a choice collection on hand, and we went on the road with the big show for the summer, thinking perhaps our business would pick up in the fall. Our two great attractions were the biggest boa-constrictor[81] in captivity, which we called 'Jointless Jake,' and the heaviest fat man in the world. That snake was about two hundred feet long, and while the fat man wasn't much on length, he held the record for belt measurement. Nine hundred and twenty-seven pounds he weighed, as we demonstrated on our own scales at every performance. Their feed bill was quite an item, as the snake took a half-dozen sheep every two weeks and the fat man, who was billed as 'Signor Adipose Avoirdupois'—Merritt invented that—needed about a side of beef every day.
"Freaks are a jealous lot and as hard to manage as rival prima donnas, and these two monstrosities came to hate each other like poison. They were in different lines, but you may have noticed that the side show 'professor' uses up most of the superlatives in the English language when he gives his lecture, and each of 'em seemed afraid that the other would get some of his share of the dictionary. Adipose used to look at Jake's coiled body as if he would like to sit on it[82] and flatten it out, and the snake would return the glance with a naughty little twinkle in its eye, as if he was estimating how much it would have to stretch its skin to accommodate A. A. in its interior, until it made Merritt anxious about 'em.
"'That blame fat fool will waste away and spoil his shape, if he don't stop worrying,' he says, and he cuts a lot of his talk out of the description of the snake and uses the words on Adipose. Maybe you think snakes are stupid, but they aren't, and the boa got the hump and refused to uncoil himself to show his length unless he got his full share of the spiel. It cheered Avoirdupois up, though, and when we moved to the next town he stood around to gloat over Jake when he was being moved from the traveling box to the exhibition cage. The snake hadn't been fed for ten days and he was good and lively as well as being out of temper, so when he caught sight of the Signor he scattered the boys with one flip of his tail and went for him.
"I've heard of bear hugs, but I never saw[83] such a squeezing as that boa gave poor Adipose. It was a long way around him, but the snake made about a dozen wraps and all we could see of the fat man was a pair of feet sticking out at one end of the coil and his face, which looked like a purple harvest moon, projecting from the other. Jake reaches out and gets hold of a tent peg with his tail, which gives him a purchase, and then he tightens up for fair and Adipose lets out a holler you could hear a mile.
"Of course, we got busy with crowbars and jackscrews and tried to pry Jake off, but there was nothing doing and the harder we pried the closer he cinched up on Adipose. Merritt usually had a suggestion to make, so I looked at him and he was lost in thought, but in a minute he brightens up and calls for a rope.
"'We can't pry the blame snake away from the man,' says he, as he tied the rope around the Signor's feet, 'so we'll try to pull the man away from the snake.' All hands fell to and pulled to beat four of a kind, but Jake just tightened up a bit[84] and grinned and Adipose let out another holler.
"'You need a traction engine on that rope,' says I when they gave it up as a bad job, and Merritt, who was looking a little discouraged, gave a whoop.
"'Bring an elephant,' he yelled, and when one of the boys started off on a run for the menagerie, he called after him to 'make that order two elephants.' The Hathis came lumbering over, and Merritt tied the rope around the shoulders of one and put another rope around Jake's neck and the shoulders of the other elephant.
"'Now pull, blame you!' says he, heading 'em in different directions and giving one of 'em a kick, and they put their shoulders against the ropes. It was a mighty interesting performance to every one but Adipose, who didn't seem to enjoy it at all, judging from the yells he let out. Jake was having the time of his life, and the harder the elephants pulled the tighter he squeezed the Signor, and when he felt that they were getting the better of him he made a supreme[85] effort which kinked up every muscle in his body. But there was no holding on against those brutes, and pretty soon the fat man commenced to slip out from the coils, feet first. It was a queer thing to watch and his legs stretched so that I thought his knees would never come into sight. His legs had been about the size of barrels when the snake grabbed him, but between the stretching and the squeezing they were now three times as long and about as large as broomsticks. He weighed as much as ever when the elephants finally got him out, but the flesh was distributed differently and instead of being six feet tall and twelve feet around, he was twelve feet long and built in proportion. The snake was up against it, too, for he had cramped himself so with that last squeeze that he couldn't straighten out the kinks, and he kept in the same shape as when he was wrapped around the Signor. We tried to straighten him out, but it was no use; he just stayed coiled up like a spring and the boys rolled him around as if he were a barrel.[86]
"Merritt had kept cheerful as long as there was anything to be done, but tears came to his eyes when he looked at Adipose. The Signor was standing up, gazing at his feet, which he hadn't seen before in twenty years, and Merritt looked up at him and freed his mind.
"'You're a blame fine figure of a fat man, aren't you, now?' says he. 'Just on account of your confounded professional jealousy we lose our two star attractions, for that blamed snake is so kinked up that he isn't good for anything except to cut up into barrel hoops.'
"The Signor was ashamed of himself and hadn't a word to say, so he just kept quiet and tried to get used to his new shape and taking a bird's-eye view of things. Merritt and I were feeling pretty blue when along comes Tody Hamilton, the circus press agent, and as soon as he saw what had happened he made a run for a trolley car.
"'Don't let 'em get away!' he yelled back over his shoulder. 'This is the biggest scoop[88] on record and I'm off for the printing-office.'
"Jake was having the time of his life, and the harder the elephants pulled the tighter he squeezed the Signor.""'It'll make a good newspaper story, all right; but where do we come in on it?' says Merritt, looking mournfully at Adipose.
"Well, a couple of hours later I had to go into the city to order some new togs for the Signor, who looked as if he were dressed in a particularly baggy bathing suit since he had been stretched out, and the first thing I saw was a procession of sandwich men marching down the street. The ink wasn't dry on the posters, but Tody had been busy, and there in flaming red letters was the announcement—
JUST ARRIVED AT THE
BIG SHOW!
DON'T MISS SEEING THEM!!!
LENGTHY LOUIS, THE TALLEST
MAN IN THE UNIVERSE!!!
CIRCULAR SAM, THE MOST GIGANTIC
HOOP SNAKE EVER CAPTURED!!!
The conventional skirt dance has long ceased to be a novelty on the vaudeville stage, but as it is performed by "La Belle Selica" in the Arena at Dreamland it holds the interest of that most exacting audience—a crowd of Coney Island pleasure seekers. It is not because Selica is pre-eminent among dancers, but on account of the unusual and dangerous stage setting; for she performs in the large exhibition cage, surrounded by a half dozen lionesses, each animal seated on a separate pedestal. Any one of the huge beasts could crush the dancer with a single blow of a massive paw, and the great jaws which snap viciously at her tiny feet as she kicks them before their faces are sufficiently powerful to crush the shin-bone of an ox.
She is apparently without fear of them,[92] for she dances gracefully from one to the other, flicking them across their faces with the light switch which she carries for her only protection, and kicking over their heads and into their very mouths, always missing the answering snap of the jaws by the fraction of an inch, and acknowledging it with a smile as she whirls away to repeat the performance before another pedestal. The lionesses see the performance many times in the course of a season, but they never lose interest in it and they do not remove their eyes from Selica from the time she enters the cage until she drives them out before her. So long as she is on her feet and agile enough to escape the swift stroke of a paw or the snapping jaws, she is safe; for a lioness would not jump at her from a pedestal; but there is always the chance of a slip or a false step and then——!!!
It happened once, and caused a suspension of Selica's performance for two months during the Pan-American Exposition at Buffalo, for Grace, the largest lioness, was on her before she could recover herself; and[93] it required the efforts of Bostock and all of his trainers to beat back the beasts who were maddened by the sight and smell of blood and to rescue the unconscious woman from the cage. They have never forgotten that moment of rebellion which was so nearly successful, and they are ever watchful for another opportunity to avenge the many[94] cuts of the training whip which they received in the course of their schooling. But Selica is also watchful, and although Grace had latterly done nothing particularly out of the way, the wonderful sixth sense which experienced trainers always acquire warned her that the animal should be regarded with suspicion. The beast had become nervous; a little more sullen than usual when ordered to leave her den for the exhibition cage, and a trifle slow and rebellious when told to jump up on her allotted pedestal.
Constant association with the wild animals begets carelessness but Selica, with the scars of Grace's sharp claws still visible on her back and shoulders, was quick to notice the change and especially careful, before opening the door from the den to the runway, to look through the observation hole and make sure that the lioness was not crouched for a spring. Grace had been particularly sullen in the afternoon and she was growling ominously when Selica went to get her for the evening performance, but when the woman saw the three little furry[95] balls which were huddled in a corner of the den she understood and forgave all. The cubs were no larger than St. Bernard puppies, but Grace apparently considered them worth fighting for; and Selica's dance was given that night with only five lionesses in the cage, and the Proprietor told the Stranger the reason for the empty pedestal.
"Wait until after the performance and I will take them out of the cage and show them to you," he said; and the Stranger, remembering a tradition to the effect that robbing a lioness of her cubs is a dangerous feat, looked forward with a great deal of interest to the after-piece.
"We can't trust the rearing of the cubs to Grace," said the Proprietor, as he stood in front of her cage after the audience had been dismissed. "The close proximity of the other animals in the Arena and the curiosity of the thousands of people who come here every day would make her so crazy that she would destroy them, so I must get them a foster mother. I have sent to New York for a bitch with pups, and in a couple of days[96] I will show you a happy family." The cubs were in the center of the cage and Grace stood over them, snarling and looking with blazing eyes at the group in front of it; but Selica's voice from the runway and a rattling of the door at the back distracted her attention, and as she sprang at the door the Proprietor darted a hand between the bars and seized one of the cubs, drawing it safely out a half second before the enraged mother landed against the bars with a force which made them rattle.
The poor beast was almost frantic, but the same maneuver was twice repeated, and in spite of her fierce attacks on doors and bars the Proprietor, who had acquired through his lifetime association with the great cats as much of their quickness of movement as it is given to mere man to learn, removed the three cubs without receiving a scratch.
Poor helpless little creatures they were, and it was difficult to realize that they would soon grow into beasts as powerful as the ferocious Baltimore, the terror of trainers,[97] who was answering Grace's lamentations with roars which fairly shook the building, from his cage on the other side of the Arena.
"That animal was bred in captivity, born and raised in our menagerie in England," said the Proprietor after he had placed the cubs in charge of one of the keepers. "I[98] suppose that's what makes him such a bad beggar to handle. Give me the jungle-bred lion to train, every time, for after the manhandling and discomfort of his capture and transportation to the coast by the natives, he appreciates the care and humanity of a civilized trainer. These cubs which are raised in captivity are always played with and teased by the employees and visitors, and their first knowledge of their strength comes to them accidentally when they hurt a man without meaning to do it; but they soon learn to connect cause and effect, and then it is time to watch out for 'em. A jungle-bred lion is pretty much cock o' the walk until he is snared or trapped, and in his first experience with men he is vanquished and realizes how useless is his great strength against the nets and ropes which entangle him. The cub born in captivity is familiar with men from the first, and plays with them like a kitten until one day he is out of sorts or is accidentally hurt in a frolic and the swift cut of his razor-like claws makes his playmate or tormentor drop him and leave[99] him in peace. That makes it hard for the trainer when he takes him in hand, for although the cub may be subdued, he remembers that he was once victorious and watches his chance. Jack Bonavita, the greatest trainer who ever went into a lion's cage, would have two good arms to-day if Baltimore had been born in the Nubian desert instead of in Manchester."
They stood in front of Baltimore's cage for a moment, admiring the swelling muscles of the great beast as he sprang from side to side, shaking his shaggy mane and roaring defiance at the world, and then turned to go to the white-topped table in front of the Arena. In the doorway they met the Press Agent, looking anything but cheerful and muttering maledictions on the heads of all city editors. The Proprietor told him of the new arrivals in the Arena, and suggested sending the announcement of the birth to the papers.
"A fat chance I'd stand of having it printed," he grumbled. "Here I've worked half the season and never given 'em a story[100] that wasn't pretty nearly true, and to-day when I take them that account of Morelli and the jaguar they turn me down and holler 'fake.' Let me take one of those cubs and stripe it over with a little black paint, and to-morrow morning every newspaper in New York will have a photographer down here to take pictures of 'the only hybrid lion-tiger cub ever born,' and all of the space jerkers will be buttonholing me for a three column, front page story."
The arrival of the waiter with soothing beverages soon brought back the customary smile to his genial face and the Proprietor's suggestion that perhaps he had embroidered some of the stories just a trifle, aroused only a good-natured protest.
"The worst thing about the press agent's profession is that he has to risk his eternal salvation by making up plausible lies to satisfy the newspapers when he could give 'em better stories which are actually true if they would take 'em on his say so," he said, as he wiped the froth from his mustache. "I remember once when a guy named Merritt[102] and myself were running a snake show in New York that we couldn't pay the rent because the papers wouldn't give us any publicity, although we had the finest collection of wrigglers that was ever gotten together. We were running it on the dead level, nary a fake about it, and Merritt's lecture was highly instructive and interesting and more than half true; but we saw that we couldn't win out at the game unless we crooked it. We were running so far behind that the only thing which saved us from a dispossess was the fact that they couldn't get a constable who would carry the snakes out to the sidewalk; but Merritt was a resourceful cuss and I felt confident that he would figure out some scheme to win out.
"'Jim,' says he, 'it's necessary for us to give 'em a sensation. We've tried to run this game as a purely moral and instructive entertainment, but we need the money and I reckon we've got to spring a cold deck on 'em. I guess you've got to stand for being attacked by an untamable, man-eating python.'[103]
"'You can count me out on that,' says I. 'Every paper in the city would write me up as a victim of the demon Rum.' Merritt looked discouraged for a minute, but his face suddenly lighted up and I knew he had found a way.
"'Jim,' says he, 'if we only take half of our usual allowance of fire-water to-night we will have enough cash to buy some paint. Now there's that big white python; the only specimen ever captured, the "pythonatus fluidum lactalis giganticus,"' says he. That was one trouble with Merritt; he'd get so stuck on the language which he manufactured that he couldn't leave it out, even in our business consultations, and it used up a lot of time. 'That python is the straight goods,' says he, 'but he doesn't catch their eyes, so I'll paint the blame snake red, white and blue and christen him the "anacondus flagelum americanibus e pluribus unum," and give the reporters something to work on,' says he. 'That'll work up the snakologists and set 'em writing in the papers to prove that there isn't any such thing; but[104] we've got the answer to that, for we can show 'em one at twenty-five cents per.'
"I never could stand for flim-flamming the generous public, but my meal ticket was punched so full of holes that it looked like a porous plaster, and I consented. Merritt spent most of the night decorating that python, and in the morning it looked like the pennant of a man-o'-war. I had to sit up and watch him, for he had the artistic temperament, and he was so carried away by his enthusiasm that if I hadn't restrained him he would have put on the coat-of-arms of the United States, eagle, motto and all.
"'Now,' says he, when he had finished and stepped back to admire his work, 'if that blame snake's own mother would know him if she met him on the street, I'm a Dutchman. If this don't make 'em sit up and take notice, then I'll go to night school to learn the show business.'"
"How did the scheme work?" asked the Proprietor, as the Press Agent paused to make the grand hailing sign of distress to the waiter.[105]
"Work!" he answered. "How does a fake always work in New York? Why, P. T. Barnum had the mold for his petrified man made from the legs of one man and the body of another, and he didn't even take the trouble to smooth off the ridges where the edges met when he cast it in Portland cement. But that didn't prevent all of the scientific sharps who inspected it from certifying to its genuineness. His mermaid was manufactured from a codfish skin and a[106] stuffed monkey; but the public stood for that, too, and he made a fortune out of 'em. Maybe you can't fool all of the people all of the time, but you can fool most of 'em most of the time; especially if they live in little old New York. Of course, we didn't pull off such a success as Barnum did; but we had no kick coming when we counted up the receipts for the next week. Merritt's lecture was a work of art and he manufactured language at a rate which would have given Noah Webster nervous prostration when he christened the python 'Old Glory,' and told about its combining the venomous qualities of the cobra and the strength of the boa-constrictor. The python was so stuck on its new colors that it nearly broke its neck turning around to admire itself and everything went lovely. Of course, there was the usual howl from the snakologists who knew it all, and 'Old Subscriber,' 'Citizen,' 'Pro Bono Publico' and the rest of the bunch wrote columns to the newspapers, denouncing us as frauds.
"You know how those things work;[107] everybody puts up an argument and then it's up to the fellow who is making the bluff to back it up with an offer to donate a sum of money to some charitable institution if he can't deliver the goods. We were well ahead of the game as a result of the advertising and had about two thousand to the good and Merritt got awful chesty. He had lied about that snake so much that he believed in it himself and it made me a little nervous one night when he offered to donate two thousand dollars to the 'Home for Decrepit Side Show Fakirs' if any one could produce another specimen like this one, short of the head waters of the Amazon. I wasn't scared so much by that as by what I feared he might say, for I knew they couldn't get another if they raked the universe with a fine-tooth comb, and sure enough, he was carried away by his enthusiasm and offered to bet our entire bank roll that the snake was a genuine 'American flag', such as had never been exhibited in any country.
"It was just our luck that there was a[108] half-loaded tin-horn gambler in the audience that night; one of the kind that wears a yellow diamond and a checked suit with a white stove-pipe hat; and the only part of the speech that he understood was that somebody wanted to make a bet. That raised his sporting blood, and he climbed up to the platform and pulled out a roll of yellow boys that would choke a dog and peeled off twenty centuries.
"'I don't know much about snakes which bromide won't make chase themselves back to the woods,' says he as he plunked 'em down on the table. 'I ain't got your gift of gab, but money talks and I've got this pile to say that you can't tell the truth to save your neck. Just stack up your pile alongside of that and then trot out your snakelet.' I was feeling pretty sore on Merritt for making such a bluff, but, of course, we had to make good and between us we covered the bet. We had glass cages full of snakes all around the platform, but 'Old Glory' was in a big chest covered with gilt figures and brass chains and fastened with a padlock.[109] Merritt was mad clear through at having his veracity questioned, but he looked pretty confident as he stuck the key in the lock.
"'It's a shame to take the money,' says he, as he eyed the gambler, 'but there's an old saying about the mental capacity of a man that is speedily separated from his bank roll, and I reckon you were away from home the last time the fool killer called.' The gam just smiled and kept his eye on the stakes, and Merritt gives the chains a rattle to wake up 'Old Glory' and throws back the lid of the chest.
"'Now,' says he, turning to the audience, 'if you'll kindly give me your attention I'll show you one of the most marvelous mysteries of Nature. It was procured by one of our special agents at the head waters of the Amazon at tremendous expense. It is a unique representative of the reptilian family and the sight of it should arouse pride in the hearts of all patriotic Americans; for as he unwinds his sinuous coils you will observe that while his head and neck[110] are blue, the body, down to the tip of the tail, is marked with thirteen alternate stripes of red and white, giving this marvelous creature the appearance of being wrapped in that glorious emblem of liberty which waves over the land of the brave and the home of the free.' Merritt stops then, throwing out his chest and sticking his hand into the bosom of his coat to wait for the customary applause from the gallery to subside; but instead of the usual glad hands he was greeted with a roar of laughter and cat-calls and when he turned to look at the snake box, there was 'Old Glory' crawling out, looking ashamed of himself, for he was as white as the day he was born."
"What happened?" asked the Proprietor as the Press Agent sighed.
"Well, Merritt always had presence of mind, and as the sport gathered up our hard earned shekels he grabbed me by the arm and hurried me from the building. He knew that a Bowery audience was apt to follow cat-calls with antique eggs and vegetables of last season's vintage, and five minutes[111] later we were trying to drown our sorrow.
"'Jim,' says Merritt, 'I made a big mistake, for I should have tattooed him. His beauty was only skin deep and the blame snake shed his skin.'"
Uncle Sam spends a large amount of money to forecast the weather twenty-four hours in advance, and the farmers and seafaring folk watch the bulletins no more eagerly than do the owners of the many shows whose harvest time is the brief summer season at Coney Island. Bad weather, especially if it comes on the first or last day of the week or a legal holiday, means a loss of hundreds of dollars to them, for if the skies are threatening, the holiday makers seek their pleasures nearer home and there are fewer people to give up their dimes and quarters under the seductive wheedling of the "barkers." Most of the show people look anxiously at the sky before retiring for the night, but there is one of them who finds an absolutely reliable forecast within the[116] walls of his own building. Perhaps the signs and portents could not be translated by the weather clerk, but the Proprietor of the trained animal exhibition at Dreamland has been all of his life the companion of his charges, and has learned to recognize the meaning of unusual behavior or the shade of change in their voices which indicates an approaching storm.
There was not a cloud to be seen, and every star in the heavens was trying to rival the brilliant electric lights on the great tower as he sat at the café table in front of the Arena with the Stranger and the Press Agent after the night's performance was over, but he gave an exclamation of disappointment as a half-smothered roar came from the throat of one of the lions in the building.
"Rain to-morrow!" he said as the grumbling roar spread from cage to cage about the great semicircle. His companions smiled incredulously as they looked at the cloudless sky, but he repeated his prediction when the Stranger read "Fair and warmer[117] to-morrow" from one of the evening papers. "I know all about the 'high and low pressure areas,'" he said, as he glanced at the chart. "A man in the show business has to study everything which may influence the attendance, but the behavior of my animals is a better barometer for local conditions than any aneroid which the Weather Bureau owns. In spite of the clear sky and the official predictions, I would wager that we shall have a bad storm within the next twenty-four hours, for those lions have the inherited knowledge of hundreds of generations of jungle-bred ancestors whose food supply depended largely upon the weather conditions."
"Do the other animals possess the same barometric accomplishments?" asked the Stranger skeptically, and the Proprietor laughed as he invited him to come inside and judge for himself. The Arena was always an uncanny place at night, for in the dim light only the glowing eyes of the animals could be distinguished in the cages, and the snarls and growls which came from behind[118] the gratings conjured up visions of what might happen if one of the animals were loose and crouching on the seats of the auditorium or in the galleries, waiting for a meal of human flesh; but to-night it was worse than usual, for the unwonted restlessness of the animals was apparent even to the untrained senses of the Stranger.
The carnivora in captivity retain the habits of their relatives of the jungle and are more alert at night than in the daytime, but following a hard day's work in the exhibition cage they usually settle down for a few hours of sleep after receiving their evening allowance of meat. Although it was long past their resting time, not an eye was closed, and hundreds of pairs of bright spots were visible in the darkness as the beasts paced uneasily from end to end of their narrow dens. The elephants, whose arduous duties in the ring and on the ballyhoo brought such leg weariness that they were usually glad to be shackled for the night, were swaying their huge bodies from side to side and straining at the stout chains[120] which fastened them and the shrill trumpeting of Tom, the largest one, was echoed and repeated by his companions, Roger and Alice. The roaring of the lions and the snarling of the tigers was mocked by the hideous laugh of the hyenas, and the discord of the strange noises was so disagreeable that the Stranger was relieved when they left the Arena and returned to the comparative quiet of the white-topped table.
"It will be a severe storm," said the Proprietor as the waiter took their orders. "Any impending change makes them uneasy, but when every animal in the menagerie is in the state of excitement which you noticed to-night you can be assured that it means a very decided disturbance. It is a thing which animal trainers are ever watchful about, for most of the training is done at night, and it is not safe to work with them when they are in that frame of mind."
"But you give your advertised performances just the same," said the Press Agent.
"That's a different matter," answered the Proprietor. "When the Arena is lighted up[121] and filled with people, the attention of the animals is distracted and they forget their nervousness, but a rehearsal at night is a lonesome proceeding, at best, and as the trainer devotes his attention to a single animal at a time it leaves the others free to think up mischief or to give way to their unreasoning fear. I had that borne in upon me in a way I shall never forget a few years ago when I was a younger hand at the business. I knew a good deal about handling animals, but not as much about managing men as I have learned since, and I used to forget that giving an order was not the same thing as seeing that it was executed. There was a trainer named Barton in my employ who did a pretty fair act with a group of six lions, but he was a brutal sort of a chap and punished his animals so severely that they went through their performance on the jump so as to get out of the exhibition cage, where blows were more plentiful than kind words. His act was a winner, all right, for he was absolutely fearless and the animals put up a bluff of snarling and snapping[122] which made it exciting, but I disliked the man so much that I was glad to farm him out for a ten weeks' engagement on the vaudeville circuit.
"He wasn't a bad-looking chap and when he came back from his tour he brought with him one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen. She was an Egyptian who had been brought to this country with a troupe of dancers for one of the big exhibitions, and he met her and married her when they were performing in the same theater. Of course, I had absolutely no use for an Egyptian dancer with my show and I made the marriage an excuse to get rid of Barton; but he begged me to keep him on the plea that he was teaching her to do his act with the lions. She was so beautiful that I realized that she would be a great drawing card if she developed into a good trainer, so I consented and signed a contract with him for another year. I regretted it when I saw the first rehearsal, for it was painfully evident that she went into the cage only because she was more afraid of her husband than she was of the[124] lions, and I didn't blame her; for while I might interfere to prevent ill-treatment of the lions, which were my property, I had no authority to protect her from his cruelty. They did most of the rehearsing at night, and I trusted to the fear which Barton had instilled in the lions to keep them from attacking her, for he always stood at the bars and they would cower down at the sound of his voice. You know it is never safe for two people to be in the cage with a group of animals at the same time unless they stand back to back and keep in one place, for if they are moving about an animal may run into one while endeavoring to escape from the other, and even the blow from a lion's tail might knock a man from his feet and then there would be trouble.
"Jim," says Merritt, ... "there is a great advantage in having a squaw for the top part of that there fish.""Poor little Leotta used to go into the cage and try to keep the tell-tale tremble out of her voice when she gave her commands, but she could never learn to concentrate her whole attention on the animals and give up looking for a sign of approval from Barton out of the corner of her eye. I made it a[125] point to see that there was always plenty of assistance near in case of accidents, and gave Barton strict orders to keep her out of the cage when the animals were under the influence of 'weather fear.' It was difficult for me to instruct or warn Leotta, for she understood English very little; but I helped her all I could, and gave her husband to understand that I would not allow any ill-treatment.
"In spite of all my precautions, I was always uneasy when she was in the cage, and when I had to be away from the show she was constantly in my mind. I had to go to the wharf one afternoon to superintend the unloading of a new lot of animals which had been sent from our English quarters, and owing to delays at the custom house it was late at night before I could start back for the show. Perhaps I had absorbed some of the weather wisdom of the animals from long association with them, but, at any rate, I was uneasy at the delays and as I whizzed along in the trolley I congratulated myself on my foresight in having warned Barton,[126] as the thunder heads were gathering and I knew the animals would have the jumps and be unsafe to work with. But my heart sank as I drew near the building and saw that it was brilliantly lighted up, for that could only mean one thing at that time of night—Leotta must be rehearsing. The trainers usually have but one small cluster of lights, but I had ordered the electrician to turn on all the switches when she was in the cage, as I thought she would be less frightened and the animals more tractable in the full light.
"My guess was right: Barton, in disobedience of orders, had made her go into the cage, and he had taken advantage of my absence to break our iron-clad rule which forbids a trainer to drink. I saw the whole situation as soon as I entered the building, and I would have given the whole show to have the little woman safely on the right side of the bars. The animals in the dens were raising a worse row than they did to-night, and the lions in Leotta's group had forgotten their fear of the trainer in their greater[127] fear of the approaching storm. They were ugly, and Barton, who was more than half-seas over, stood at the bars shouting abuse at his wife and the lions and jeering at her evident terror. I saw that the other trainers and keepers appreciated the danger, for they were gathered around, holding iron bars, Roman candles and pistols; but they had sense enough to know that any interference which would draw his attention from the cage would precipitate the trouble, and none of them could make Leotta appreciate the danger of her position. I went up to him quietly and told him that I thought he had better call the rehearsal off for the night, intending to square accounts with him as soon as Leotta was safely out of the cage; but the drink was in his brain and he turned on me and cursed me. Leotta gave a scream of terror as the brute turned his back on the cage and, as if by a preconcerted plan, every one of the six great beasts jumped for her.
"Barton knew that the game was up, and in his drunken rage he attacked me and it[128] kept my hands full to manage him; but the others rushed for the cage, and while Bonavita and Stevenson beat off the lions with the help of the keepers on the outside who were firing pistols and Roman candles and using fire-extinguishers through the bars, Bobby Mack picked up Leotta and carried her outside. Of course, that ended Leotta's career in the show business and finished Barton's employment with me. The poor little thing's beauty was gone, for a lion's claws make deep cuts, and it was many a day before she was able to leave the hospital. You can see that I have reason to be confident of the accuracy of the predictions of my weather bureau, for if there had been no thunderstorm brewing I might have developed a sensational lion act."
"Or if Leotta had understood English," commented the Press Agent, as he beckoned to the waiter. "Of course, it is sometimes an advantage to have performers who can't converse with the audience, but it is mighty inconvenient if they can't understand the orders of the boss. I lost the chance of making[130] a lot of money once, because a squaw who was working for us couldn't understand the white man's lingo. A guy named Merritt and myself were disappointed about getting a concession for a snake show at the Pan-American Exposition, and we found ourselves broke in Buffalo, which is separated from the Bowery by about five hundred miles of very tough walking when you haven't got the price of a railway ticket. Merritt was mad clean through at being thrown down by the Exposition managers, but he was an inventive genius and I knew that he would figure out a way to raise the price of transportation.
"'Jim,' says he as we counted up our available assets and found that they were pretty well along toward a minus quantity, 'it makes me dead sore to be turned down this way without getting a run for our money, and it's up to us to increase our capital and incidentally give the bunch that done us dirt the double cross. Get your think tank working and see what it will produce.' I couldn't see a way out, but when[131] a squaw from the Tonawanda Reservation, who was selling trailing arbutus, came up to us and offered us a nosegay, Merritt gives a whoop and claps me on the shoulder.
"'Jim,' says he, 'I've got it and we'll make our everlasting fortunes!' He commenced to question the squaw, but all the English she knew was 'ten cent a bunch,' and he didn't make much headway until a big buck Injin who had been watching her from across the street came over and butted in. It appeared that he was her husband, and when Merritt stated his proposition the buck accepted the terms without the formality of consulting the squaw. When the Exposition opened we had a big tent on an open lot across from the main entrance, with a life-sized picture of 'The Marvelous Mermaid' as big as a house. As I remarked, Merritt was an inventive genius and he had worked up a scheme to deceive the confiding public. He had provided a platform and carefully cut out a hole so that the squaw could stand on the ground and the edges of the hole fitted snugly about her[132] waist. He made her lean forward and rest her chin in her hands in the conventionally accepted mermaid position, and then he fitted a fish tail which lay along the top of the platform, and it was so skillfully joined to her that it looked as if it grew there. She was a good-looking squaw and she certainly played her part and made an interesting picture.
"Of course, he couldn't explain to her what he wanted her to do, but he would tell the buck, who would carefully translate and impress the instructions upon her memory with the aid of a bale stick. The thing which he put most stress upon was that she was to remain absolutely still, no matter what happened. I sold the tickets and put up the spiel on the front, and Merritt lectured inside and we did a land-office business. Lots of smart guys came around and tried to get gay with the mermaid, but she couldn't understand their joshing and never cracked a smile. The blame tent caught fire one night when it was filled with people, and she had such a wholesome recollection of the bale[133] stick that she kept as still as a cigar-store Indian until we had cleared the place and put the fire out.
"'Jim,' says Merritt as he looked her over admiringly after that experience, 'there is a great advantage in having a squaw for the top part of that there fish. She can't understand what the Willie boys say to her and nothing feazes her. A white gal would have had hysterics and given the whole snap away.' It gave Merritt a lot more confidence and we felt pretty safe after that experience, and neglected to have the buck repeat his bale-stick admonitions to her upon the necessity of cultivating repose of manner. Everything was lovely and we were turning hundreds of people away and making more money than the big show. One afternoon we were playing to a record house and Merritt was doing himself proud on his lecture.
"'Ladies and gentlemen,' says he, 'I have the honor to present to this intelligent audience a creature which is commonly, but erroneously, supposed to be extinct at the present[134] day; but you have before you a living and convincing proof that mermaids still exist. I confess that until I was able to obtain this unique specimen, which was captured while basking in the sun and singing a love song upon an iceberg in the Antarctic Ocean, I shared the opinions of my fellow scientists that the mermaid was a fabulous or extinct creature; for during a lifetime devoted to exhibiting the mysterious marvels of nature to the American public it had never been my good fortune to acquire one. You will observe that she is half woman and half fish, and she is perfectly helpless when out of the water. She is unfortunately unable to express herself in any known tongue; in fact, she has never uttered a sound since her capture and we fear that she has lost her voice, which—' Just then he was interrupted by a howl of terror from the platform, which was followed by a roar of laughter from the audience, and when he turned he saw the squaw standing up and trying to wrap the fake tail around a pair of well-developed, copper-colored legs. Her face was as pale[135] as a squaw's face could get and Merritt knew the jig was up. I was peeking in the door, and when I saw what had happened I gathered up the box-office receipts and faded away. I met Merritt that evening in our usual saloon, and underneath a pair of black eyes and a battered-up phiz I could see that he was wearing a look of deep disgust.
"'Jim,' says he, 'this is what comes from pinning your faith to a woman and not appreciating the weakness of the sex. She faced the danger of being burned alive and never turned a hair; but when she saw a measly little mouse crawl under the platform she busted up the whole show.'"
The Stranger said good-night and started for the city, but before he reached the railway station he was drenched by the downpour which the Proprietor had predicted.
"You were not in this part of the country when New York was in an uproar for two days over the escape of one of my lions," said the Proprietor to the Stranger as they joined the Press Agent. "I suppose that ninety per cent. of the people who remember it think that it was all a fake, but I can assure you that I put in the most strenuous forty-eight hours of my career while he was loose, and it pretty nearly decided me to give up the show business. It was my first experience at running an independent show, and after great persuasion I had induced my father to let me bring some boxing kangaroos, two young lions and Wallace, a fine big brute about fifteen years old, from our English establishment to the States. Wallace was already a famous—or infamous—lion in[140] England, where he had the score of three trainers to his credit. He had received the name of 'The Mankiller' over there, and they were rather relieved to have me get him out of the country.
"His last victim was a Frenchman, one of the best-known trainers in the business, and he went into the cage to subdue Wallace on a wager. He won, and a remarkable performance it was, but I won't take the time to tell you about that now. He made just one little mistake: his vanity got the better of him when he turned his back on the lion to bow to the audience after remaining in the cage for ten minutes. As I said, he won the bet, and it about paid the funeral expenses of what was left of him. After that the only man who could go near Wallace was a half-breed American Indian from up near Cape Cod; Broncho Boccacio, he called himself. I don't know what the other half of him was, and I don't remember how he happened to be with our English show, but all sorts and conditions of men drift into the animal training business. At any rate, he[141] was the only man who could do anything with Wallace, and that wasn't much. He would get into the cage and chase him around a bit and then jump out quick—always backward after seeing what happened to the Frenchman. I brought him along to take especial charge of the brute. It took a couple of days to get the animals through the customs, and in the meantime I cast about for quarters and finally rented a stable[142] on Eighteenth Street to keep them in until I should secure an engagement." He took a pencil from his pocket and drew a plan on the white table top.
"The stable was arranged in this way: here in the front was the carriage house with these narrow stairs at the side leading up to the loft. On each side of the door was a window facing on the street, and back of the carriage room was the stable proper—two stalls and a loose-box. On one side of the stable was a saloon and on the other a carpenter shop, so I didn't expect much complaint from my neighbors, as my men patronized one, while I ordered the carpenter to build a traveling cage for Wallace which would slide on wheels, as our English cages were too heavy to handle in a country where labor is as high as it is here. I moved the lions up to the stable to let them rest a bit after the voyage and started to look for an engagement. It was a hard row to hoe, as I was not known in this country, and the best I could do was a booking at a dime museum for a month, and I had to take a lowish price[143] at that, but I ordered a big nine sheet poster and trusted to luck to make more out of them later.
"The lions were in three cages in the stable, and in one of the stalls I had a trotting horse which had been purchased for my brother in England, and which I kept there until I should have an opportunity to ship it to the other side. The kangaroos were in the loft, and a couple of days after they were all settled my two little girls came over from the hotel with me one morning and went up there with the nurse to play with them while I went into the carpenter shop next door to settle for the new cage, which had just been delivered. Broncho, as soon as he struck his native soil, had discovered a camp of other Indians on the Bowery and spent most of his time in their encampment, leaving a Cockney Englishman in charge of the lions and the horse. I intended to wait until he arrived before shifting Wallace to the new cage, but the Englishman thought he would show his cleverness and attempted to do it alone without waiting for us. He[144] threw a piece of meat into the new cage and then rolled it up to the old one, and when the doors were opposite each other he opened them. Of course Wallace made a spring for the meat in the new cage, but he struck the edge of the door, and as the Cockney had neglected to block the wheels the cage rolled away and the keeper gave a yell and bolted for the stairs. There was a loose lion downstairs—and a bad one at that—and the nurse and two children in the loft.
"The first I knew of it was from the nurse, who had grabbed the children and stood with them in the door which had been used to pass the hay in, yelling 'Fire!' and 'Murder!' but I knew that there was hell to pay as soon as I reached the street, by the sound which came from the stable. We got a ladder from the carpenter shop and hustled the nurse and children down to the street, and then I went up to the loft, while the nurse and the Cockney held the small door from the stable to the street, which could not be fastened from the outside until the carpenter spiked some plank over it.[145]
"A look into the stable convinced me that I did not want to go down the stairs, for with one blow Wallace had converted a thousand-dollar trotting horse into two dollars' worth of lion meat, and he was crouched on the body, which he had dragged from the stall, clawing at its throat and drinking the blood. The place looked like a shambles, and the growls which came from Wallace as the other lions threw themselves against the bars of their cages in their efforts to get out and join in the feast were redoubled when he caught sight of my head through the trap-door.[146] I slammed it down and drew the kangaroo cage on top of it and then went down to the street to see that the windows and doors were securely boarded up. A great crowd was gathering and I was afraid that the police would shoot the brute, for I saw the possibilities of an advertisement which would more than pay for the expensive meal which Wallace was making from the trotting horse.
"Just as I reached the street, Broncho strolled up. As I said, he was a queer-looking guy; his skin was copper-colored and he had piercing black eyes and long, fuzzy black hair which fell down to his shoulders. His nose was hooked and something about his face always reminded me of a bird of prey. He was only a half-breed, but when I told him what had occurred he was all Indian and he drew a long knife and started for the Cockney, who gave only one look at the expression on Broncho's face and then started for Harlem, touching only the high spots until he was quite out of sight. Broncho didn't chase him; he just looked after[147] him with a smile on his face, glad to see him disappear, as there had been more or less bad blood between them for a long time. Then he came to me and laughed at the idea of danger and offered to go into the stable and put Wallace back in the cage. I knew that it would be impossible until the lion had gorged himself on horse meat, and now that the damage was done I was in no hurry to allay the excitement until the police and reporters arrived. We didn't have to wait long, for the crowd had grown until the street was blocked, and, of course, the reporters asked more than a thousand questions. When I had worked the sensation up pretty well I consented to let Broncho take his training rod and go down, and I went with him carrying a club and a pitchfork. Things commenced to happen right away, for Wallace didn't wait for the call of time, but sailed right into us, and when I saw that he was getting the better of Broncho I made a bluff at going back to the carcass of the horse. Wallace bounded back to protect it and crouched on it, snarling viciously, but[148] the delay gave me a chance to help Broncho up the stairway. There was not enough of his trousers left to wad a gun, and while I was bandaging up a deep claw wound in his thigh that advertisement seemed less and less important to me, and I would have given a good deal to have Wallace safely behind the bars of his cage again. He was contracted for four weeks anyway, and it takes a pretty big sensation to be remembered for more than thirty days in New York.
"Well, we fussed about all day, trying to figure out some way to get the beggar back in his cage, and I got an earache listening to advice from people who had never seen a lion, but who considered themselves experts. At sunset Wallace still held the fort and the streets were blocked in all directions, for the afternoon papers were out with extras with scare-heads. The boards over the windows made the interior of the stable so dark that no one could see into it, but the roars which came from it gave the spectators all the thrills they were entitled to and caused a stampede every few minutes. We tried to[149] drive Wallace into the cage with a stream of water from the fire plug, but he only shook his head and growled at it, so we gave it up and waited for daylight. There were about forty policemen and a crowd of reporters about the place all night, and I was getting nervous for fear some fool would shoot the lion, whose value was increasing every minute,[150] so I kept awake and did a heap of thinking.
"I knew that Wallace would fight for his 'kill' as long as any of the meat was left, so we rigged up a tackle to try and draw the carcass out. We were all ready at daylight and the crowd was bigger than ever. Say, if you want to count the idle people in New York just get up a free show at any hour of the day or night and they will all come. There must have been over a thousand loafing about the street all night. We were just getting ready to make a try for the horse when the idlers outside gave a cheer, and I saw an express wagon loaded with nets and ropes and all sorts of animal catching stuff drive up. Tody Hamilton, Barnum's press agent, had caught on to the possibilities of an advertisement, and sent to the winter quarters at Bridgeport for some of their animal men to come down and capture a loose lion. They supposed it was in Central Park, and when they found it was in a stable the job looked easy to them. One of them, a man named McDonald, had been[151] with our English show, and when he heard that it was Wallace they were to tackle his enthusiasm seemed to melt. He told the others a few anecdotes of the lion, and two of them went to find the Cockney, I guess, for we never saw them again.
"We managed to throw a slip noose around the carcass from the stairs, and when we passed the end of the rope out of the window there must have been five hundred men pulling on it from the way that horse's body slid across the floor. The four of us stood around the trap-door to beat Wallace back, and when he realized that he was losing his prey it kept us busy.
"Say, a dead horse seems to have more legs than a centipede when you try to drag it through a narrow space, and they all stick out in different directions. Of course, this one stuck and then there was more trouble, for when I took an axe to dismember it, a cop threatened to arrest me for cutting up a horse in the city limits. It took three hours to satisfy the red-tape requirements and get a permit from the Board of Health, and[152] then I had a long, sickening job, for we had to haul up what was left of the poor beast in fragments, and all the time Wallace was snapping at them or rushing at us. We gave him several nasty cracks over the snout, the only place where a lion seems to be sensitive to pain, but it only made him uglier than ever and I knew that there was a pretty fight ahead of us. It was a case of 'Perdicaris alive or Raisouli dead' with me, for the police were getting impatient, and I knew they would shoot him if we did not get him caged before night.
"We drew lots to see who should be the first to go down, and I think that McDonald stacked the straws, for Broncho won—or lost—I was second, the other Barnum man third and McDonald last; but he made good after we got down there, and it was what the President would have called a 'crowded hour.' If Wallace hadn't been full of horse meat, which made him a trifle slow, I think he would have chased the bunch of us out, and as it was he gave us all we wanted to do. We used blank cartridges, Roman candles,[153] training rods and whips, and I learned afterward that the crowd outside thought we were all being torn to pieces, but we finally conquered and it was a singed and battered lion which jumped back into the den and gave me a chance to slam the door. The noise of the clicking lock sounded good to me, and I went up the stairs with a lighter heart, in spite of tattered clothes and a scratched hand and bruised body. I knew that I had a small fortune in the beast, but I nearly cried when[154] I went into the saloon to freshen up, and the first thing I saw was the poster with the announcement that Wallace would be shown at the dime museum. I knew that it would make the reporters, who had been writing columns of space, suspect that it was all a fake and prearranged. The manager was afraid that I would renege on my contract after all the free advertising, but he didn't know me.
"Sure enough, the reporters came for me in a body while I was still tired and dirty from the fight and worn out with anxiety and loss of sleep. They accused me of having put up a job on them, but I guess the sight of my condition convinced them of my sincerity, for only one paper even hinted at any crookedness, and that proved the best advertisement in the whole business.
"It was the Sun which came out in an article about Wallace, saying that he was toothless and decrepit from old age, and that there had never been the slightest danger from him. If the reporter who wrote it had gone into the stable with us, I don't[155] think he would have written the article. I did my own announcing in those days and I always started off with the announcement, 'Ladies and gentlemen! If you see it in the Sun, it's so, and the Sun says that Wallace is played out and toothless from old age.' Then I would make a move to the front of the cage, and Wallace, who had a special hatred for me, would spring at the bars and show as pretty a set of fangs as you would wish to see and I was always sure of a laugh.
"Well, I showed Wallace in New York and other cities for thirty straight weeks and got back the value of that trotter a good many times over," continued the Proprietor as he rose from the table. "His name is one to conjure with, even yet, and nearly every lion which is exhibited in the side shows at the county fairs is billed as 'Wallace, the Untamable!' The original Wallace is still alive and at our English breeding establishment." He said good-night and left the table, the Press Agent looking regretfully after him.
"That's just like the boss," he complained[156] as he watched the retreating figure. "He takes the center of the stage until he has told his story, and when my turn comes to get in the limelight he does the disappearing act. That was a pretty good story, but talking of escapes, I can tell you about an escape that is worth talking about. It happened when a guy named Merritt and myself were running a snake show next to a camp meeting down on the Jersey coast. We didn't have any regular snake charmer, but we bought a lot of wrigglers from a dealer down on the Bowery and Merritt made himself up for a Hindoo fakir. He would get into the cage with them and those snakes would wrap themselves about him from his head to his toes and it was an awe-inspiring sight. He taught them to stand up on their tails and dance while he played on a tin whistle and to do other pretty little tricks, but the great and original stunt was what he called the 'Interminable Snake,' when one would grab the biggest snake's tail in his mouth, another would fasten onto him, and so on until the whole blame lot looked like one big[157] serpent. Say, those snakes got so stuck on that game that they would do it for sport without the word of command. Whenever one started to move around the cage another would grab his tail, and the first thing you knew the whole bunch was going around in a string and the sight of it was enough to make a man swear off for a year.
"We were doing a fine business until a temperance lecturer set up a show a little way off, and that cut into us so that there was nothing much doing. The crowd would walk right past the entrance to our 'Highly Moral and Instructive Exhibition,' and go on to listen to the temperance guy telling them about the evils of drink, as illustrated by the horrible living examples which he had upon the platform. You see that was a free show, while ours cost a quarter—and cheap at the price.
"One afternoon after I had cracked my voice trying to draw the crowd without landing one of 'em, Merritt comes to me, and as we saw the crowd pouring in to the[158] temperance show, we looked at each other and shook our heads in sorrow.
"'Jim,' says Merritt, 'that guy down there has got you skinned to death on the ballyhoo, and it's up to you to go over there and get next to the attraction and see if we can't cop it out for our show. I hate to ask it of you,' says he, 'knowing your views on the temperance question, but business is business and this ain't no time for sentiment.' It went against the grain, but I knew it must be done, so I went down to the lecture. I wasn't wise to the game, but I was anxious not to miss a trick, so I went right up to the front, and the first thing I knew I was seated on the mourners' bench, right under the platform. As soon as the lecturer came on I piped him for a guy that used to pull teeth on the Bowery with a brass band accompaniment and a gasoline torch, and I remembered that at that time he could punish more booze than any man I ever knew. He had the gift of gab all right, and he had picked up a couple of panhandlers for horrible examples and they[159] looked the part. If either one of them had ever drawn a sober breath in twenty years he should have sued his face for libel, and they looked as if they had been towed behind a trolley car from the Battery to Fort George.
"Well, the ex-jaw carpenter cut loose in good form, and he soon had every one worked up, telling the horrible things which alcohol did to your interior lining, and giving a description of the menagerie which a man sees when he has the jim-jams, which would have done credit to the boss lecturer in there." He pointed with his thumb to the Arena, and the alert waiter, taking it for a signal, refilled the glasses.
"He did it so well that he sort of had me going, and I was beginning to think that possibly I was taking a trifle too much," continued the Press Agent, as he sampled the fresh drink. "I was giving the matter serious thought, when my attention was attracted by one of the panhandlers who was nudging his partner.
"'Bill,' says he, 'tell the old man to put[160] on full steam ahead, for I'm backsliding and need encouragement. I'm afraid I've got 'em again. Look there!' Bill looks down the aisle and gets uneasy, too.
"'Hank,' says he, 'I've got 'em, likewise, only that ain't my usual kind of snake, coz he ain't got no plug hat with a red flannel band on it; but it's me for the bromide and the simple life.'
"'It's this damn Jersey whiskey that's changed 'em,' answers Bill. 'Mine always has gorillas ridin' 'em.' Well, I looked around and I would have been scared myself if I hadn't recognized our own bunch of snakes, each one of 'em with the tail of the snake in front of him in his mouth. Old 'Limber Larry'—we called him that on account of his habit of going to sleep curled up in a true lover's knot—was in the lead, and behind him came about half a mile of snakes.
"They were festooning themselves up the aisle, coming slow, because there were a couple of them which could not move very fast, and when the gait got too lively they[161] used to bite their leaders' tails. Old Larry was raising his head and looking around every few feet, and just when the lecturer had reached the most thrilling part of his 'Ten Nights in a Barroom' spiel he caught Larry's eye and the meeting adjourned, sine die, right there. You couldn't see him for dust as he broke for the nearest 'speakeasy,' and the two panhandlers were hanging on to his coat tails.
"Just then Merritt comes in looking worried, for he had gone to sleep and let 'em get away from him, but when he sees 'em he takes his tin whistle out of his pocket and goes back to the show, tooting it like a blasted Pied Piper, the snakes following along as meek as Mary's little lamb, and most of the audience goes with him at a quarter per."
"Did business improve?" asked the Stranger.
"Improve? Why, my boy, after we put that temperance show out of business we just turned 'em away for three months. Not only did we do a good business, but the[162] hotel people put us on the free list at the bar, because Merritt used to take 'em down in 'Interminable Snake' formation for a dip in the ocean every morning, and the hotel press agent wrote it up as the daily appearance of the gigantic sea serpent."
A delegation from the National Association of Press Agents which was holding its annual meeting in the interests of the Furtherance of Truth and the Elevation of the Show Business had left the meeting place in New York, and after inspecting the various moral and entertaining performances at Coney Island was gathered about one of the white-topped tables near the Dreamland tower. Colonel Tody Hamilton, prince of press agents, master of a picturesque vocabulary, inventor of superlatives in the English language and champion of veracity, pointed laughingly toward the Arena, where the Proprietor of the trained animal exhibition was instructing a new barker how to make the most out of a trick of one of the elephants which was being used for ballyhoo[166] purposes in front of the entrance to his show.
"Listen to him, gentlemen, and you will be convinced that he is eligible to membership in our truth-loving fraternity," he remarked admiringly. The ungainly pachyderm was standing on its hind legs, trumpeting through its upraised trunk a protest against the prodding of the sharp goad which was forcing it to walk backward in that absurd position. The voice of the Proprietor, who was using a megaphone, came to them distinctly as he invited the people to look at "One of the greatest triumphs of the animal trainer's art; something which has never been exhibited in any country—an elephant WALKING UPON ITS HIND LEGS, BACKWARD!"
The speech caught and held the attention of the crowd, and when the elephant was allowed to rejoin its companions and the three great beasts entered the building in single file, Tom grasping Roger's tail in his trunk and Alice following suit with the caudal appendage of Tom, a goodly number[167] stepped up to the ticket booth and paid their entrance money. The Colonel and his associates, whose business had made them familiar with elephants, smiled at the credulity of the crowd, but acknowledged the Proprietor's skill in attracting an audience.
"You wouldn't believe that I spent over seven hundred dollars to turn that smallest[168] elephant white a few years ago," said the Colonel as the waiter refilled their glasses, but his companions made unanimous protestation that they would believe any statement he made, and the Colonel settled back comfortably in his chair to tell the story which they demanded.
"You will have to listen to the story of the famous war of the white elephants, then," he said, good-naturedly, "a struggle which will remain famous in the circus world as long as the big tops are spread. It was in the good old days of fierce competition in the business, the days when the press agents earned every dollar of their salaries, and sometimes had to go to the extent of saying things in print which were not strictly true. There was intense rivalry between the two big shows, the P. T. Barnum and the Forepaugh aggregations, and the bitter feeling between the proprietors was transmitted to the employees. The advance agents would steal each other's printed matter and posters out of the express offices, and you could always count on a fight between the canvas[169] men whenever the two shows were close enough together. They would damage each other's property, loosen nuts on the wagons so that the wheels would come off and cause upsets, and do anything to embarrass the rival show.
"Each show tried to outdo the other at every point; advertising, number of performers, length of the street parade, menagerie collection and everything which money could buy. They started in to see which could get the largest herd of elephants, each advertising the largest herd in captivity, and that competition raised the price of elephants all over the world and denuded every small zoological park in Europe, while it pretty nearly bankrupted the shows to feed them. We had eighty with the Barnum circus, and finally Mr. Barnum came to me and said that he had purchased a Sacred White Elephant and told me to start giving it publicity. Of course, I didn't know anything about that particular kind of elephant, but as I always like to be perfectly accurate in my statements I made a scientific study of[170] it. I found that, as a matter of fact, there was no such thing as a white elephant known in natural history, although there was an occasional absence of the usual pigment in the skins of some beasts which give them a trifle lighter color, and that these animals were apt to have a few spots on the body which were nearly white, just as you sometimes hear of a negro who is spotted. When such a spot occurs in the center of the forehead the Buddhists regard the beast as sacred, from the fact that the god, Buddha, is always depicted as wearing a jewel in that position and it is looked upon as his special mark of protection. It is the ambition of every Indian Rajah to possess one, for then he is billed as 'The Lord of the Sacred White Elephant,' a title which seems to fill a long-felt want in the heart of an Oriental potentate.
"Well, Barnum's agent had, by some hook or crook, procured one of these and sent it to London, but owing to the lateness of the season it was decided to leave it there in the Zoological Gardens and get up a controversy[171] which, in itself, would be a good advertisement for it. The average Englishman is very fond of writing to the Times to expose a fraud, and we knew that there would be a protest from those who would be disappointed in the brute's color. There are hundreds of retired officers who have served in India living in London, and they know all[172] about Sacred White Elephants, and time hangs heavily on their hands. They were only too anxious to certify to its genuineness, and they wrote the peppery kind of replies to the criticisms which might be expected from men who had spent the best years of their lives under a hot sun and lived upon curries and red peppers. Of course, I saw that the letters were copied in the home papers, and before the circus season opened I had the Great American Public watching anxiously for the reported sailing of the Sacred White Elephant.
"I should have been on my guard, for the Forepaugh bunch just kept sawing wood and saying nothing, but whenever I met their press agent he gave me the quiet laugh. Our elephant was finally shipped, and you can imagine that I made the most of it in the papers. I had 'em filled up for two days, and then, while ours was still in mid-ocean, out comes Forepaugh's announcement that his Sacred White Elephant would land in New York the following day. I knew it was a fake, for they were very difficult to[173] obtain, but they stole our thunder, just the same. I managed to get a peep at it while it was being unloaded, and although it was only a dirty yellowish color, I knew that it would make ours look like a decided brunette by comparison. They had worked it well and kept it quiet, but knowing that there was a nigger in the woodpile and that money would bring him out, I spent it like a drunken sailor in trying to get information.
"Forepaugh had eminent scientists examine the beast and give their certificates that it was genuine, and all the inside information I could get was that the elephant had been purchased through Cross, the great animal dealer in Liverpool, and that it had been kept secluded in his place there all winter. Sam Watson, who was Forepaugh's foreign agent, and his groom, a man named Telford, were the only people who had access to it, and they had spent hours every day in its stall. Cross would give us no information as to how or where he obtained the elephant, for Forepaugh bought all of[174] the animals for his menagerie through him, while we dealt with his great rival, Hagenbeck, of Hamburg.
"Forepaugh got all the newspaper space for the next few days, and when our elephant finally arrived it looked mighty dark-colored for a white elephant when compared with the fake one. It was hard to educate the people up to the significance of the little white spot in the center of the forehead, but any one but a blind man could see that Forepaugh's fake was lighter in color. We went at it, horse, foot and artillery, and the fight cost the two shows more than a quarter of a million dollars, and lasted until we patched up a truce in St. Louis to save us both going into bankruptcy. I got some of Cross's employees to swear that they had seen the elephant being painted in Liverpool, and Forepaugh replied by getting a commission of scientific sharps from Ann Arbor to examine the beast and swear that the color was natural. There was good money in perjury and scientific opinions those days, but I never let up for a minute in my endeavor[175] to get at the truth of the matter, for I knew it was hanky panky and I am a diligent searcher after truth, especially when a rival has sunk it to the bottom of a well. I experimented with some of our elephants until I nearly took their thick hides off, but I could get no satisfactory results until I called in[176] Marchand, the chemist, and asked him if he could give me something to bleach an elephant. He had an especially strong solution of peroxide of hydrogen made up, and I selected the smallest animal out of our herd of eighty to try it on. It happened to be the one which you just saw working on the ballyhoo over there, which you noticed was the ordinary slate color. We soaked cloths in the peroxide and covered the beast with them and then put blankets on top. After they had been on for awhile we washed the animal with ammonia and water and repeated the performance until that elephant was as white as snow.
"Forepaugh was to open in Philadelphia, so I shipped our fake over there, and when they had their street parade I followed right behind it with our bleached animal on a truck which was liberally placarded. The notices called attention to the fact that Forepaugh's alleged sacred elephant was simply painted and that the men who did it were bunglers at the business. 'Look at This One!' read our largest placard. 'We[177] TELL YOU that it is a FAKE! So is Forepaugh's, but he won't tell! This is A BETTER JOB BY A BETTER ARTIST!' That made the Forepaugh people hot, and they replied with a new bunch of affidavits and expert opinions from a lot of University of Pennsylvania professors. That couldn't offset our show-up, though, and the whole situation had become so mixed that the public thought all of the elephants were fakes. We had the only genuine one and the best fake also, but they were a pair of white elephants in every sense of the term, and a losing proposition. The one which we had bleached would only keep white for about two weeks, and as each treatment cost seven hundred dollars Barnum called me off. The Forepaugh bunch was trying to poison it, and as the whole thing was dead as a money-making venture and white elephants a drug in the market, we let this one regain its natural color. When the great herd was broken up it was sold off, and I never saw it again until to-night."[178]
"But what was the inside history of the Forepaugh white elephant?" asked one of his companions, and the Colonel smiled as he lighted a fresh cigar.
"I never knew it until this year, when one night over a friendly drink Sam Watson, who is now a clown with the Big Show, confessed the whole thing. Forepaugh is dead and the shows have been consolidated, so there is no further object in keeping the thing quiet. It seems that Forepaugh's agents found out that Barnum had purchased the elephant from an impecunious Indian Rajah; in fact, he had purchased two, the first one having died on its way to England. It was the misdirection of a cable announcing the death and ordering another at any cost which put them wise to the fact that Barnum had a rarity. Watson had never heard of a sacred elephant, but he started out to get one when he read that cablegram. They were scarce articles, and Barnum had bought the only two which were to be had for love or money in all India, so he and Cross got their heads together and[179] started out to manufacture a bogus one in Liverpool.
"They prepared a closed stall, which was always kept locked, and put an elephant in it—just a common, or garden, elephant. Then Sam and his groom, Telford, proceeded[180] to get busy with bath bricks, pumice stone and a barrel of white aniline dye. I imagine they had a pretty hard winter's work and it was certainly a tough period for the elephant, because they had to scrape about half the skin off the poor brute before the dye would take hold. They finally succeeded in getting him several shades lighter than normal, all except about eighteen inches at the end of the trunk. They could do nothing with that on account of the habit of the beast, which was always mussing around in its bedding, searching for stray peanuts.
"They kept in touch with the London Zoo and found out when we were to ship the genuine one, and then got their fake on a steamer which would land it in New York a few days ahead of us. Of course, they had to keep working at it all the way over, but they kept it quiet and no one caught on. When the scientific sharps came to examine it, Sam would hoist the trunk up in the air while he drew their attention to the marvelous whiteness of the under side, and no one[181] caught on to the fact that the end of the trunk was the natural color.
"He let them remove some bits of skin for microscopic examination to prove that no dye was used, but he always had them taken from the inner side of the foreleg near the body, from which the natural pigment is absent in all elephants. Sam swears that they never had to fix one of the experts; they were only too anxious to get the advertisement, and they were prepared to swear, and did in this particular case, that black was white.
"I have a few gray hairs in my head, and most of them came during the strain of that fight. The game isn't what it used to be and I'm glad that it isn't, and let me tell you, as a result of long experience, that the worst thing which can happen to a man is to have a white elephant, fake or genuine, on his hands."
The doctor shook his head as he slipped his ophthalmoscope into his pocket, and Rey, the trainer, who had been holding the bear's head still while the oculist made the examination, opened the door of the cage for him. The bear—a medium-sized black animal—wandered aimlessly about, stumbling over the water pan and knocking its head against the bars, its eyes, which were evidently sightless, shining like two fiery opals as they reflected the electric light.
"I am sorry to tell you that it is a hopeless case," said the physician to the Proprietor, who was standing with the Stranger in front of the cage watching the examination. "Both optic nerves are atrophied, and the[186] animal must have received some serious injury, possibly a heavy blow on the forehead." The Proprietor, who has the reputation of being a "good loser," thanked him and gave some directions to the trainer about the care of the animal before leading the way to the table in front of the Arena, where the Press Agent was waiting for them.
"It is rather unusual to call the most famous specialist in the country to examine a menagerie animal," he said, after the doctor hurriedly left them to catch the express train back to the city. "You know that he takes no small fee; his services are either given for charity or his charge is very high—and this visit was not for charity."
"I should think that the value of a bear would hardly warrant the expense," answered the Stranger as the waiter filled the glasses.
"It wouldn't be for an ordinary bear, but I was willing to pay anything in reason to restore the sight of this particular specimen, so I sent for the best-known oculist in New[188] York. The decision which he has just given will probably mean a loss of thousands of dollars to me, but that is one of the risks which I have to assume. Would it interest you to hear a rather unusual romance of the menagerie business?" The Stranger gave eager assent, and the Press Agent settled himself comfortably and lighted a cigar.
"You have no idea how many animals are offered to the owner of a menagerie and from what unusual sources the offers come," said the Proprietor. "Travelers in far countries bring back strange animals as pets or curiosities; people buy young wild animals which get beyond control when they mature and become veritable white elephants on their hands, and their owners have to dispose of them. I have had everything from monkeys to lions brought to me, and so it did not surprise me when an artist came to the Hippodrome in Paris last winter and asked me if I didn't want to purchase a bear. He seemed anxious for me to see it immediately, and at his earnest solicitation I got in a cab with him and drove to his studio, which was[189] situated on the far side of the Seine. The bear which you saw examined to-night was in a small room adjoining the studio, chained to a ring in the wall.
"The apartment was luxuriously furnished, and I realized that it was not lack of ready money which made the artist so anxious to dispose of the brute; but he seemed in a desperate hurry to have me take it away, and offered it for such a low price that I closed the bargain at once. I suggested sending one of my men for it in the evening, but he insisted upon my taking it with me, and as the bear was evidently as gentle as a kitten I called a closed cab and drove away with it. The bear sat comfortably on the seat beside me and gave no trouble, but as we drove along I got to thinking the matter over and the whole proceeding seemed a little strange. I had Mephisto, as the bear was named, put in a cage well away from the other animals—a sort of quarantine precaution which I always take with new arrivals—and as there was apparently nothing unusual about him gave[190] him little attention, there being for the moment no group of animals in training for which he would be available. I soon noticed that during the intermissions, when the audience wandered about and examined the animals in the cages, there was always a crowd of women about his den; but I thought that it was because he was such an inveterate beggar, and had a habit of standing at the bars with his mouth wide open, waiting for some one to flick a lump of sugar into it.
"The bear had given us no trouble, and there was only one peculiar thing about him: he seemed to have an aversion to cats. The bodies of three of them had been found in front of his cage, although we had never seen one killed. The cats about a menagerie instinctively keep out of harm's way, and it puzzled me to know how Mephisto had managed to get them within reach of his heavy paw. Jack Bonavita, who fusses about his lions at all hours of the day and night, solved that mystery and incidentally saved his pet cat, Tramp, from an untimely ending.[191] Tramp has been with Jack for years and appreciates the folly of venturing within reach of the animals in the cages, but Bonavita came across him in front of Mephisto's cage in the middle of the night. The bear was absolutely quiet, lying with its head on its paws and its eyes, which glistened like two points of flame, fixed on the cat. Tramp was staring at it in turn and slowly drawing nearer to the cage, apparently struggling against some influence which was stronger[192] than its will. Bonavita watched them for a few minutes, but before the cat ventured within striking distance he picked it up and carried it away, while Mephisto, growling with rage, tried to break through the stout bars and get at it.
"Two days before we were to sail for America I was sitting at my desk arranging some of the last details of shipment, when the door burst open and a well-dressed, handsome woman rushed in, followed by the artist who had sold me the bear. She was in a tearing rage and jabbering excitedly in a language which I did not understand, while the artist was trying to quiet her. She pushed him aside, and opening a purse which was well stuffed with banknotes, she asked in French, which she spoke with a marked foreign accent, for how much I would sell Mephisto. The artist protested, but she turned on him and gave him a tongue lashing of which I could guess the meaning, although the words were unintelligible to me. I couldn't quite grasp the situation, but the strange hypnotic power[193] which the bear apparently exercised over cats had excited my curiosity, and I wished to investigate it at my leisure, so I politely but positively refused to name a price, and told her the animal was not for sale. The artist seemed relieved and she was very much disappointed, but she quieted down and asked me what I intended to do with the animal. I told her that I was taking it to America, where it would be put in a mixed group which Rey was to train, and after inquiring when we were to sail, they left the office.
"I regretted that I had not taken the opportunity to find out something about the history of the animal, and looked over the audience to try to locate the couple, but they had left the building. One of the keepers told me that she had screamed when she recognized the bear and called it by name. She was trying to bribe him to let her go into the cage when the artist came up and expostulated with her, and they had an awful row before coming to my office. I heard nothing more from them and we[194] shipped the animals at Havre the following day. The traveling dens were placed in the 'tween decks, which is not a pleasant place to be when the ship is tossing about, and I was surprised the second day out to find the woman who had tried to purchase Mephisto standing in front of his cage in that smelly place, talking to the bear as if it were a child. She laughed when I came up to her, and told me that as I would not part with the bear I would have to take her with the show. I, too, laughed, for I have a large family of daughters, and I knew that the simple traveling gown which she wore had cost more than two months' salary of my best trainer, but to my great surprise she was in dead earnest, and asked me seriously if I would not let her train a group of animals."
The Press Agent grew very attentive, but the Proprietor told him that he was not talking for publication, and that a name which occupied several pages of the Almanach de Gotha was sacred, even from an American promoter of publicity.
"And she does carry that name and was[195] born to it," he continued, "but I can't tell you what it is. She didn't tell it to me and it was not on the passenger list, but the ambassador from a great European nation came on from Washington to see her and remonstrate with her and to influence me to exclude her from the show. I wouldn't consent to that, but I am afraid that the[196] accident of the bear's going blind will be the cause of my losing an act which promised to be sensational."
"You have kept it quiet enough," said the Press Agent with a trace of resentment in his voice. "It sounds to me as if it ought to be good for a front-page column in every New York paper."
"As I told you, there are reasons why I can't exploit it," answered the Proprietor. "I am counting upon it for my opening sensation at the Paris Hippodrome next winter, and I don't intend to discount it before a Coney Island audience. But to get back to my experience with her on the steamer. I found that she occupied the most expensive deck stateroom, and had a maid and a man servant traveling with her; so that I refused all of her renewed offers for the bear when I found the powerful fascination it had for her, and I finally consented to let her try the experiment of working with a group of animals. You know the class from which trainers are usually recruited, and you can imagine the interest I[197] take in a woman who possesses an absolute fearlessness which is inherited from generations of ancestors who have never shown the white feather, in addition to education and intelligence. The only thing which puzzled me was her motive, and that I have not discovered yet, although the ambassador, who had received all sorts of communications about her from his own government, told me her history. It seems that she has always been noted for her eccentricity and her rebellion against the strict laws of convention which were supposed to control her life, and this is not the first time she has defied them. She had commissioned the artist—who, by the way, is one of the most celebrated men in Paris—to paint a portrait of her. At the same time he was painting an exhibition picture to be called the 'Dancing Bear,' and had purchased Mephisto for a model. The picture was to represent the bear dancing on its hind legs opposite a woman, to the music of a flageolet played by a man bear leader—such an exhibition as is commonly given at the country fairs throughout Europe.[198] He had no difficulty in getting a male model, but he was in despair about the woman dancer. He tried model after model, and although they started in all right each one became so nervous after a sitting or two that they refused to continue. The bear was chained to the wall and they were posed safely out of reach, but each of them asserted that the animal was like a serpent and trying to charm them so that they would come close enough to be caught. They were all afraid that they might yield to the fascination and be seriously injured. Tramp, the cat, would probably have told the same story if he had been able to talk.
"As a matter of curiosity the artist experimented with men, but the bear appeared indifferent to them and the men made no complaint. It only seemed to exercise this strange hypnotic power over women—and cats—for the artist found two Persian felines, which had been studio pets, dead beside it; simply crushed, as were those which were killed by the bear at the Hippodrome. He mentioned the matter during[199] one of the sittings for the portrait, and the lady, being curious to see the animal, came to his studio—and then the trouble commenced. She developed a most unaccountable attachment for Mephisto, and he was as gentle as a lamb with her. They would sit facing each other by the hour, and the artist swore they talked to each other and understood each other perfectly. The animal never attempted to harm her, but the artist became alarmed for fear there should be an accident, and believing that there was something uncanny about the brute, he decided to get rid of it and sold it to me.
"Well, I watched her with the bear on shipboard and since we landed, and I can't yet understand her control over it, for it does not control her in any way. There seems to be a sympathy between them which makes them absolutely understand each other, and through it she understands the other caged beasts. The act which I had framed for her when I found that she was absolutely in earnest was a dance to be given in the midst of a group of adult lions. The[200] lady is absolutely fearless and approved the plan, but stipulated that she should select the lions.
"'I have means of knowing which ones will behave and which are such idiots that they can't be controlled if anything goes wrong,' she answered when I suggested that I was a better judge of the dispositions of the lions. 'I don't intend to have my beauty spoiled,' she said, 'and I only want beasts which are intelligent. No one can trust a fool.' Perhaps I have fallen under her influence, which according to her standard should indicate intelligence, for I have given way at every point and her judgment has proved correct, for in rehearsing the act she has perfect control over the animals, three of which I considered the most vicious in the menagerie. I let her take them in fear and trembling.
"For the past three days she has been anxious and uneasy about the bear and has insisted that it was rapidly going blind. She says that the bear is her teacher about things in the animal world, and that she can tell[201] what it is thinking about. Its eyes look perfectly sound, and it is only for two days that we have noticed anything wrong with it. Mephisto knew its way about its old cage so well that it gave no evidence of blindness, and a bear is naturally clumsy in its movements, but when we moved it to a strange den it stumbled over everything. I experimented by bringing Tramp in front of its cage, but with the loss of sight the hypnotic power has apparently deserted it, and the cat paid no attention to it. Finally I called in the doctor and you heard him pronounce his verdict."
"But where is the great loss?" asked the Stranger.
"It is principally a loss in prospective profits," replied the Proprietor as he beckoned to the waiter. "I had the new act all planned out for Paris—the lady was to appear masked for her performance, but I knew her identity would be discovered and that it would be a tremendous sensation. I don't know how much of her desire to train animals is due to eccentricity and as a protest[202] against the conventions which hedged in her former life, and how much to her strange infatuation for Mephisto, but since its blindness has developed she has lost interest and I suppose she will renege on the whole business."
"How do you account for it all—her infatuation for the bear and her intuitive knowledge of the dispositions of the lions?" asked the Stranger.
"I don't try to account for anything. It is one of the thousand things about animals and the million things about women which no mere man can understand," replied the Proprietor laughing. "I have simply given you the facts of the situation and you can draw your own conclusions, but the bear's blindness upsets my plans and possibly prevents a sensation in circles which approach royalty."
"Women are difficult to understand," agreed the Press Agent as the Proprietor paused to moisten his throat, "and a man who is in love with one of 'em is just about as unaccountable for his actions. I had that[203] fact engraved upon the tablets of my memory when a guy named Merritt and myself were running a dime museum in Pittsburg. Merritt was a good, hard-headed business man as a rule and he made a first-class lecturer; but when I found that he was taking to 'dropping into poetry' and delivering his descriptions of the freaks in verse, I began to get leary about the condition of the contents of his head. The poetry was always extemporaneous and was pretty bad, but it amused the crowd when it wasn't too sentimental.
"As I say, the poetry was strictly on the bum, but what it lacked in quality it made up in quantity and he could spiel it off by the yard. Whenever he got stuck for a rhyme he would blow the whistle which he used to call the crowd in front of the freak he was lecturing about and move to the next platform. That didn't happen often, but whenever we had a Circassian Beauty among the freaks Merritt's poetry got so sentimental that no one but a bride and groom could stand for it—and it had to be[204] early in the honeymoon at that. He would ring in turtle doves and azure skies and all the wishy-washy things in natural history and mythology and it was positively sickening.
"He sure had a soft place in his heart for Circassian Beauties, and as they were as common as wire tappers on Broadway under a reform administration he was always getting sentimental. We used to get a new lot of freaks each week; our agent in New York engaged 'em and sent on the advertising matter ahead, and when we looked over the list I could see Merritt's face brighten up if there happened to be one of the fuzzy blondes included in the bunch.
"Business was good, in spite of Merritt's poetry, so that I didn't kick when I saw that another one was coming. It was a good assortment: a Legless Wonder, The Man Who Breaks Paving Stones With His Bare Fists, a pair of Siamese Twins, a Leopard Boy and a particularly fuzzy Circassian Beauty. I saw Merritt's eyes grow soft when he looked at her photograph, and I[205] prayed for a large proportion of the newly wedded among the audience that week.
"Well, Merritt starts in with the Stone Breaker and restrains himself pretty well; the only sentiment he got in was a fervent wish that 'a certain blonde beauty, with eyes of cerulean blue, would not break a[206] heart which time would prove tender and true,' as ruthlessly as this man cracked rocks. He was gradually working up to the blonde, you understand, and he got warmer as he approached. The next one was the Legless Wonder, and he got a little tangled up in his comparisons when he sprung his poetry about him and tried to ring in the Circassian, and he had to blow his whistle like blazes to spare the blushes of the audience. The Siamese Twins gave him a good opening about 'bonds eternal' and the 'season vernal' and he didn't do a thing with it. The Leopard Boy was a cinch for him as he declaimed that
"That made the Leopard Boy mad, for you know that freaks are as proud of their[207] deformities as a mother is of a new baby, and look on normal people as objects of pity. But Merritt blew his whistle and passed on to the Circassian, and he made sheep's eyes and threw a chest as his fingers toyed with her peroxide locks. Say, it was sickening to listen to, and I saw that even the Stone Breaker was showing signs of distress and couldn't stand much of it. He bore up pretty well at first, while Merritt stuck to describing the 'golden locks and eyes of blue,' but when he got to the 'sugar is sweet and so are you,' stage he commenced to get mad and moved over to the platform.
"'Say, Mag,' says he, 'get down offen dat staige an' come away from de guy. It ain't in our contrac' dat we has ter stand for his gettin' soft on youse an' stringin' youse like dat. Come down, er I'll climb up an' break his face fer him.'
"'Sure, Mike,' says the blonde, and climbs down. That made Merritt mad and he talks real English without any poetic frills for a minute. He allowed that he[208] could lick any Stone Breaker that ever came off the Bowery, and when he started to prove it there was a mix-up which made the breaking up of 'The Society upon the Stanislaus' look like a fist fight between two Frenchmen. The walls were covered with curiosities from all over the world, and pretty soon they were flying through the air. Merritt yanked down an Indian war club and started for the Stone Breaker and somebody swatted him over the head with a mummy. The Legless Wonder couldn't join in, but he contributed a two-headed calf which was preserved in a jar of alcohol, and the Leopard Boy grabbed a bunch of Zulu spears and prodded every one in reach. Even the blonde was something of a scrapper and she mixed in with a miscellaneous assortment of stuffed animals and preserved specimens, to say nothing of some choice language which she hadn't learned in Circassia. The place was pretty well wrecked by the time the police arrived and separated the fighters.
"'What's all this row about, anyway?'[209] asks the sergeant after they had quieted things down.
"'Dat guy was tryin' to get nex' to me wife, de Circassian Beaut',' answers the Stone Breaker. 'He spouts bum poetry about her, an' I won't stand fer it, see? Leave me go an' I'll crack his nut as easy as I would a pavin' stone.' Merritt had lots of fight left in him and tried to break loose, but the Circassian's remarks wilted him and I never knew him to use poetry again.
"'Aw, wot's de use, Mike?' says she. 'Youse can't crack a ting dat ain't hard, an' his sky-piece is made of mush.'"
Chauncey Depew was at the bottom of all the trouble; not the punctured senator from the state of New York, but his namesake, one of the handsomest double-striped royal Bengal tigers ever captured. Depew was the central figure in the group which Miller, the trainer of tigers, had worked so hard to educate, and it was his rebellion which made the teacher's labors of years come to naught. Late in the season, after months spent in giving the finishing touches to their education while they were with a small part of the show which was exhibited near Cleveland, the tigers were brought to Dreamland; a group of eight magnificent beasts, all jungle bred and each worthy of a place in any menagerie.[214] Perhaps it was the discomfort of the journey in the small traveling cages, possibly the change in the surroundings and the nearness of the other animals excited them; but whatever the cause, there was trouble in the narrow runway at the back of the dens when they entered it to go to the exhibition cage for their first Coney Island appearance.
The sound of their snarling and growling, the reports of pistol shots and the cracking of training whips caused a sensation of uneasiness in the audience until the first tiger bounded through the door at the back of the cage, closely followed by a half-dozen others. Dangerous beasts they looked as they threw themselves against the stout bars, which rattled from the impact of their great bodies, and the front seats of the auditorium were quickly vacated by the audience. The noise in the runway continued, but the deep throaty growls which came from behind the dens were of a different quality from the snarling and yapping of the seven beasts in the exhibition cage,[215] and when the last of the tigers appeared in the doorway the first arrivals made renewed efforts to escape through the bars.
It was Depew; not the good-natured-looking great cat whose "I-have-eaten-the-canary" expression and smug whiskers had suggested his name, but a jungle tiger who had "gone bad," as the animal trainers call it, and who stood for a moment in the doorway, wrathfully surveying his frantic companions and selecting a victim. Froth was[216] dripping from his snarling lips, his small eyes were blazing like two points of flame, the hair on his neck and back stood up like bristles, and his great tail struck the door-casing resounding whacks, as he lashed it from side to side. Only a moment he stood there, and then the great striped body hurtled through the air as if shot from a catapult, and covering a good twenty feet in the spring it landed fair on Bombay, one of the largest tigers in the group. The aim was a true one and the sound of breaking bone mingled with a scream of pain from his victim, as Bombay sank under the weight of the blow, his cervical vertebræ crushed between Depew's powerful jaws.
The door had been closed behind Depew when he made his spring, and the other tigers were chasing madly about the great cage, looking for a chance to escape. There was no desire to fight left in them, but when they collided with each other they snapped and struck with the instinct of self-preservation, their sharp claws and teeth cutting gashes in the sleek striped coats. It was[217] evident that all training had been forgotten, that fear of anything so puny as man had departed from the minds of the tigers, and a groan went up from the audience when the door was opened and quickly closed behind Miller, the trainer, who stood, whip and training rod in hand, in the cage with the maddened animals. He went about his work as quietly as if it were only an ordinary performance, his object being to return his pupils to their dens before further damage was done and to try to make them recognize that they were obeying him.
Depew was still crouched on the body of his victim, biting at the neck and growling ferociously, his tail lashing from side to side. Miller never took his eyes from him and kept between him and the door as he called the others by name and tried to regain control of them. One tiger after another was released, glad of the opportunity to escape, as the door to the runway was opened at Miller's signal, until only Depew, the body of Bombay and the trainer occupied the cage.[218]
The other tigers had entered into a general free fight in the runway, but the noise of their bickering was unheeded in the excitement of the contest in the exhibition cage. Depew rose as Miller cracked his whip and approached him, and made a rush which the trainer met with his pronged training rod, driving it hard between the widely opened jaws while his whip rained blows upon the tiger's face. But he was only checked for a moment, and under his fiercer attack the trainer was forced to give ground. They were so close that the tiger could not spring, but he struck savagely with his great forepaws and tried again and again to pass the guard which Miller maintained with the training rod, using it as a fencer uses a foil. It was an unequal contest and the trainer realized that he was beaten; Depew would not be driven from the cage. The useless training whip was discarded and a savage rush from the tiger was met by a pistol shot in the face, blank cartridge, of course, but effective for a moment. Five more shots followed in quick succession and the trainer[219] backed quickly toward the door, when his foot slipped, he was on his back, and Depew, quick to seize the advantage, stood over him.
Every keeper connected with the show stood about the cage with the Roman candles, fire extinguishers, pistols and irons which are always kept in readiness, and any or all of them would have willingly entered to rescue the man, but experience has taught[220] them that two cannot work together in a cage with animals. They were quick to act and a stream of water under heavy pressure from the fire hose struck the tiger in the side, exploding fireworks scorched his skin, the din of revolver shots was in his ears, while the wads from the cartridges stung him, but he seemed conscious only of the prostrate form beneath him. At last his chance had come; the trainer who for long months had made him do foolish things which were beneath the dignity of a royal tiger was in his power; the revolver which had so often checked him was emptied; the cruel training rod was powerless, for the hand which held it was pinned to the floor by a huge paw. Cat-like he paused to glory in his triumph, loath to give the coup de grâce which would put his victim beyond the reach of suffering, and he stood there growling, the bloody slaver from his jaws dripping on the upturned face of the prostrate man.
Animal trainers need to think quickly and to seize the slightest moment of hesitation or[221] indecision on the part of their pupils if they wish to be long-lived, and Miller, as he fell, had thrown his useless pistol out of the cage and uttered the one word "Load!" There was no time for that, but Tudor, seeing that the trainer had one arm free, threw his own pistol through the bars and it slid across the floor of the cage straight as a die to the outstretched hand. It was a time when fractions of a second count and Depew's hesitation robbed him of his revenge. The opened jaws were within a foot of the trainer's throat when the muzzle of the pistol went between them, and Depew, coughing and choking, drew back, his throat scorched by the burning powder, his eyes momentarily blinded by the stream from a fire extinguisher, while Miller struggled to his feet.
"People who see the crowds at my show think that I must coin money," said the Proprietor as he joined the Press Agent and the Stranger after the performance. "But that accident in the Arena to-night means a loss of fifty thousand dollars to me."
"Isn't that a high figure, even if they all[222] die?" asked the Stranger, who had been doing a little mental arithmetic.
"For those eight, yes, although a trained tiger is worth all sorts of money, but I have purchased twenty-eight in all for that group, and the others have been killed one by one, fighting among themselves. They average over a thousand apiece, for I bought only the best, and figure up the cost of their keep, transportation and trainer's salaries for three years and you will find that I am not far out. That is the difficulty of the show business in America, the public demands so much. It is a marvelous thing, when you come to think of it, to see one educated tiger; but if he wore evening clothes and played the fiddle it wouldn't impress the Americans; they would demand a full orchestra. I can give an act an hour long in Paris with one high school horse, but here they want fifty liberty horses in a bunch and only care to watch them for ten minutes. I realized that from Bonavita's act with the lions; no individual lion did very much, but the fact that there were twenty-seven of[223] them in the cage drew the crowds. That's what made me start in with the tigers, and I intended to get a big group, but now I am back where I started from. I don't believe a troupe of tigers can ever be trained."
"Hagenbeck has them," ventured the Stranger. "They seem as tame as kittens with his show."
"That's just the point," answered the Proprietor. "They are as tame as kittens:[224] undersized brutes which have been raised in captivity and which go through their act like domestic cats. That isn't what the public wants. A sensation—the realization that every animal in the cage is a wild animal and that he is liable to remember it at any minute—is what holds attention. That is why I always use jungle animals when I can get them, for, although they can be as well trained, they always perform under protest and it makes it exciting. But the losses from fighting among themselves make it mighty expensive to keep up the big groups which the American public demands."
"That's one of the things which drove me out of the show business," said the Press Agent as he set his empty glass on the table and signaled to the waiter. "A guy named Merritt and myself had a snake show in New York a few years ago which presented the most complete collection of reptiles ever gotten together, for it contained specimens of every species of wriggler known to herpetology and a good many that were not described in the books. That man Merritt was[225] an inventive genius and had the California sharp, Burbank, beaten a mile when it came to inventing new species. When business was dull he'd take a lot of common, ordinary snakes into the back room and with a bottle of peroxide of hydrogen and an assortment of aniline dyes he would bring out albinos and spotted and striped snakes which made the scientists open their eyes and kept 'em busy inventing new Latin names.
"His biggest success was 'The Great Two-horned Rhinoceros Serpent,' which made 'em all sit up for a month, and if I hadn't seen Merritt working over a common boa-constrictor with a pair of shark's teeth and a dish of bird lime it would have fooled me. That snake was proud of the horns which Merritt glued on his head, too, and he used to chase the other snakes around the cage and butt 'em like a giddy billy-goat. But in spite of all his ingenuity in originating new varieties, business was dropping off, for the public demanded quantity as well as quality and we had skinned the local snake market clean. We were sitting in the[226] office one day, figuring on where we could get additions to our collection, when a stout, red-faced little man who had 'sea captain' written all over him came in and asked if we wanted any more snakes. Merritt allowed that we did if the snakes and the prices were right and asked where we could inspect them.
"'Well, I've got one that I brought from Borneo and he's on a ship down in the harbor,' says the Captain. 'We won't argue none about the price, for if you'll come down and take him away you can have him for nothing.' That made Merritt a little suspicious and he asked the Captain if it were his ship.
"'I reckoned it was until two days ago, when that blame snake broke loose,' he answered irritably. 'Since then he seems to own it and not a man jack of the crew will go below. I've tried to shoot him, but the beggar's too quick, and I want to discharge my cargo, so if you ain't afraid to tackle him, come on.'
"'Me afraid! Me?' says Merritt throwing[227] out a chest. 'Why, man alive, I'm the only living snake charmer who ever dared handle the dangerous Two-horned Rhinoceros Serpent, and do you think I'd weaken before a common Borneo python?'
"'I dunno whether you will or not until I see you try,' says the Captain. 'I've handled a Malay crew, which is worse than serpents, and I've mixed it up with most of the scum that sails the seven seas, but this blame snake's got me bluffed all right. He's three fathom long, as big around as the mainmast, and made up principally of muscle and wickedness.'
"'Just watch me. Watch me!' says Merritt. 'I'll use my wonderful hypnotic power and you'll see the serpent crawl into the bag at my command, to be easily transported to this moral and elevating show for exhibition as an example of the power of mind over matter.'
"'All right, professor,' says the Captain. 'But if you'll take my advice you'll stow those shore-going togs and get into working rig before you tackle him.' Merritt was[228] arrayed in all his finery, and if you'd ever seen him you'd know that that meant a lot, for when he was flush he could make Solomon in all his glory, or any other swell dresser look like a dirty deuce in a new deck. He had on a light suit with checks which were so loud they drowned the music of the orchestra, and a shirt which would make a summer sunset hide its head in disappointment. Patent leather shoes with yellow tops and a white plug hat with a black band around it completed his costume, except for a few specimens of yellow diamonds which adorned his shirt front and cuffs.
"Merritt snorted contemptuously at the suggestion and we started for the ship. When we got on board he made a little speech before he went into the hold, telling the sailors about his wonderful hypnotic power and how he would exercise it to charm the serpent which was preventing their worthy Captain from reaping the rewards of his arduous toil and his hardihood in having braved the perils of the vasty deep. The sailors listened and grinned, but the Captain[230] was getting impatient and suggested that Merritt get the snake first and give his spiel afterward, so Merritt went down the ladder with the bag over his shoulder and we all rubbered down the hatchway to watch the capture.
"I knew what he would try to do, for I had seen him work it before. The way to get one of those big snakes is to cover his head with a bag, and then he'll crawl in himself to get into the dark, which is a serpent's idea of safety. The more you prod 'em the faster they'll crawl, and that was the time when Merritt always made passes with his hands and muttered gibberish to impress the spectators. He started in according to programme as soon as he located the snake, which was half hidden among a lot of casks. The snake carried out his part and struck at the opened bag which Merritt held out to him, but instead of sticking his head in he grabbed it with his teeth, and as Merritt held on he drew him back among the barrels and there was a pretty fight. Merritt was quick enough to get a strangle hold around the[231] snake's neck and then it kept him busy keeping out of his coils. The Captain hadn't lied much about the size of the python—it was about thirty feet long—and Merritt didn't have time to use any incantation, although considerable forcible language floated up through the hatchway. They wiped the deck with each other for about twenty minutes, and Merritt had been bumped against pretty nearly every cask in the hold before he finally succeeded in drawing the sack over the snake's head. Then it was easy, and in spite of his lack of breath the showman in Merritt asserted itself. He put the sack on the floor, and with one foot on the neck of it he prodded the snake's body with the other while he made mysterious passes with his hands until the tip of the tail disappeared. When the sack was securely tied up the python was hoisted on deck, and Merritt, his clothing torn and soiled with pitch and the miscellaneous oily and sticky things which made up the ship's cargo, climbed up after it.
"'Did you see me?' he asked proudly, throwing out his chest. 'Did you observe[232] the wonderful hypnotic power which overcame the prowess of the serpent?'
"'Yes, I noticed it, along toward the finish,' answered the Captain, grinning skeptically as he sized up Merritt's dilapidated apparel. 'But say, professor, what I can't understand is why you didn't get it working sooner.'"
THE END
Two French clowns and a performing dog.
"Things which Nature never intended them to do."
"Blank cartridges fired in his face."
"Five hundred dollars to any
one who will enter the cage."
"A constant procession of small animals moving down his throat."
"The wise guy."
Noah listens to the tale of a Johnstown flood survivor.
"Just two little red dots on the back of his hand."
"He smoked his cigar in the lobby like any other guest."
"Jocko, giving a howl of rage, danced madly up and down."
"All of his savage instincts were aroused."
"A 'Tattooed Lady,' and she's all covered with picters."
"A procession of sandwich men."
"Brought the head of the cobra close to his face."
"You're a blame fine figure of a fat man."
"Now, if you'll kindly give me your attention."
"Looked like the pennant of a man-o'-war."
"Kicking over their heads and into their very mouths."
Grace snarled over the cubs.
"Every one of the great beasts jumped for her."
"A howl of terror from the platform."
"There was a loose lion downstairs and a nurse and two children in the loft."
"His vanity got the better of him when he turned his back on the lion, to bow to the audience."
"Broncho was only a half-breed."
"We didn't have any regular snake charmer, but Merritt made himself up for a Hindoo fakir."
"Sam Watson confessed the whole thing."
"Walking upon its hind legs, 
"Forepaugh had eminent scientists examine the beast."
"Then Sam and his groom, Telford, proceeded to get busy."
"There seems to be a sympathy between them."
"Tramp was slowly drawing nearer to the cage."
"The bear sat comfortably on the seat beside me."
"He made sheep's eyes and threw a chest."
"The first tiger bounded through the door."
"Depew was still crouched on the body of his victim."
"Depew, coughing and choking, drew back."
"Merritt was quick enough to get a strangle hold around the snake's neck."
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