intelligent audience a creature which is commonly, but erroneously,
supposed to be extinct at the present 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 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.
MAKING A STAR LION AND AN INTERRUPTED TEMPERANCE MEETING
MAKING A STAR LION AND AN INTERRUPTED TEMPERANCE MEETING
"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 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 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 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.
[Illustration: _"There was a loose lion downstairs and a nurse and two
children in the loft."_]
"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 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 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.
"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. 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.
[Illustration: _"His vanity got the better of him when he turned his
back on the lion, to bow to the audience."_]
"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 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
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 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, so I kept awake and did
a heap of thinking.
[Illustration: _"Broncho was only a half-breed."_]
"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 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 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, 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 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.
[Illustration: _"We didn't have any regular snake charmer, but Merritt
made himself up for a Hindoo fakir."_]
"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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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."
KALSOMINING AN ELEPHANT
KALSOMINING AN ELEPHANT
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 purposes in front of
the entrance to his show.