THE CIRCUS AT HAPPY HILLS
“Mister Uncle Ben, ain’t che goin’ to ask no money fer our circus?”
asked Joe Brennan, when he heard of the entertainment.
“Why no, Joe, this is to be a treat given by us to the people who did
so much for Little Citizens. It will cost them a lot of money just to
get here, as it is.”
“Dey all got autermobiles what dey will use. Dey don’t have to buy
car-tickets,” argued Joe.
“The autos use gasoline, you know, and it is a long ride. Besides, Joe,
why do you ask such a question. The cash taken in wouldn’t do you any
good?” wondered Uncle Ben.
“I was t’inkin’--we could start a fund fer dat city home yeh know--de
one you’se said oughter be run fer Little Citizens. I ain’t got no home
to live in when I gets back to Noo York and it’s cold in winter, lemme
tell you!”
“Joe, I am going to take up that very subject with these people when
they get here and show them the good that home-life has done for you
all. Now if you will promise to keep this secret, I’ll explain just why
I’m anxious to have them see you boys and girls perform and do your
best in some way.”
Joe eagerly agreed to keep the secret, and Uncle Ben continued:
“I’ve been planning about that City Home ever since we discovered
Maggie could sing and Nelly could design, and some of you boys could
play so well on musical instruments. I see that it will be necessary
to bring all those interested welfare workers together here to see
for themselves just what good a home in the city will do to you all.
It isn’t the circus so much, as the idea to get them here and see the
improvement in Little Citizens.”
Joe grinned at the confidence shared with him and said he would do all
he could to make the show a success.
Uncle Ben then stopped at Mother Maggie’s Nest to ask her which of
her songs she had decided to sing at the entertainment. Maggie was so
joyously happy at the opportunity to sing in public that she rattled
off ten songs, one on each fingertip as she counted--or she would have
forgotten some.
“Oh, Mister Uncle Ben, if we only had gold wagons and an elephant! But
of course we can’t have such wonders!”
“Some of the boys want a steam calliope to play the music for the
parade,” ventured Uncle Ben.
“Hoh never! You woulden’ let any such awful thing come an’ whistle
itself to pieces around Happy Hills, would you?” cried Maggie fearfully.
“No; besides, it is impossible to get a calliope without hiring a lot
of performers with it, and we are going to supply our own talent, you
see.”
“Thank goodness! If one of them screech-enjuns came here I’d run and
run till I was out of hearin’ of it!” said Maggie, decidedly.
“I suppose you heard that we are to have wild animals and other
wonderful side-shows, eh?” asked Uncle Ben.
“Yes, an’ I wuz thinkin’, Mister Uncle Ben: You’d have to be mos’
pertickler about handlin’ them animals! It takes a man what knows wild
beasteses to look after ’em proper. You might git bitten er killed if
you don’t look out. I saw some at Central Park Zoo, an’ at the Bronx
too, an’ the keeper had to keep safe away from ’em, I _tell you_!”
“My wild animals won’t hurt anyone. In fact the ‘lion shall lie down
with the lamb’ and the wolf will never think of killing,” laughed Uncle
Ben.
“Is it a joke?”
“If I tell you my secret, will you promise never to tell anyone?”
whispered Uncle Ben.
Maggie quickly agreed, and thereupon she heard the most remarkable
secret as was yet connected with the circus.
“Oh Mister Uncle Ben! How funny! Won’t everyone laff!” said she after a
hearty laugh. But she kept the secret.
Uncle Ben proceeded to the Big House where the Blue Birds and Bobolinks
were awaiting him. As he drew near, Miss Selina remarked:
“He’s smiling as if he had something funny to tell us.”
But he said nothing, and all the coaxing and urging to tell what had
occurred at Happy Hills to amuse him availed nothing.
While Uncle Ben was training the Blue Birds and Bobolinks to do their
part in the circus all unknown to Miss Martin, the latter was gradually
absorbing every inhabitant at Happy Hills camp into her company.
Even Dinah and her assistants offered to do their share. That share
consisted of baking pyramids of good cookies and ginger-snaps, and
preparing lemonade, for a stand just beside the entrance to the arena.
If the day was bright and clear, the circus would take place in the
clearing where the firemen exhibited their prowess. If it was rainy, it
would have to be curtailed in many acts but could be given in part at
the Refectory, called “Hippodrome Hall” for the occasion.
The morning dawned bright and cloudless to the great joy and relief
of many worrying circus people. The benches were quickly placed at
the upper side of the base-ball diamond, and several large canvases
borrowed from a house-painter in the nearest town, were hung up as
screens for the side-shows.
The Fire-house was decorated with greens and flags but the apparatus
was pulled out and left to dazzle all eyes at one side of the building.
The inside was to be used for other purposes.
Uncle Ben had supervised his police and firemen in erecting temporary
pens behind the canvas screens, and here his wild beasts were to be
exhibited. Adjoining the pens were a number of large piano cases raised
upon posts so that they were about eighteen inches from the ground. The
front sides of these great boxes were gone but wooden laths made “bars
to the cages.” On the top facing each box was painted the name of the
wild thing within.
The first case was to hold a fierce Numidian lion, said to be the
only one ever caught and tamed at Happy Hills. Next to this was a red
wolf--a man-eating wolf at that! Then one was to see the wild man from
Borneo with a great ring through his nose that he might be made to obey
without danger to his keeper.
Then there was to be an Albino girl, and a few savage Zulus with
poisoned arrows to shoot at passers-by. There was a placard over one of
the cages saying that the strange animal shown was the only one of its
kind ever found, and being a native of the Valley of Delight, it was
considered as very valuable.
There were other curiosities to see in the side-shows, but the greatest
interest centered about the animal cases. The boys who had helped build
the cages told the other Little Citizens, and naturally it created
much guessing and excitement. Would Mister Uncle Ben really have wild
animals there?
Maggie was in the secret, but so well did she keep it that no one even
guessed she knew the truth about the plan.
Inside the Fire-house, Uncle Ben and Ned and Jinks worked hard for
several hours before circus time, then the door was shut and padlocked
to keep out all curious sight-seers.
At two-thirty sharp, the Happy Hills’ Brass Band struck up a patriotic
air and the visitors and friends who had assembled to witness the show
given by the Little Citizens, hurried to the circus grounds.
The side-shows had to be visited first, as they would not be continued
after the general performance began. The Fire-house was the first in
the row so, not only visitors, but Little Citizens as well, filed in
to see what Uncle Ben had prepared for them.
The side walls of the small building were covered with Navajo blankets
and other barbarous-colored draperies. Spears and weapons from Aunt
Selina’s cozy-corner and oriental collection were gleaming dangerously
from corners. Freshly cut hay was thrown on the floor to make a carpet
of green, and upon this sat a group of Hopi Indians. Don and Dot Starr
were young ones while Babs was a papoose strapped in a wicker basket
and stood up in a corner.
A tent was rigged up in one corner and before this a brave who strongly
resembled Meredith, sat smoking a long peace pipe. But no one could see
any smoke rising from the bowl or from the lips of the stolid Indian.
He was in war-paint and wore all his trophies of scalps and wild
beasts’ teeth or skulls, so he seemed savage indeed. Two squaws, one
beading a pair of moccasins and another cooking over a camp-fire, were
too industrious to look up at the curious visitors.
“The squaw-cook what’s poking at the kettle without any fire burning
under it, looks a heap like Miss Lavinia,” whispered Maggie, in a
stage-tone.
Everyone laughed and even the squaw had to turn away her face or ruin
the effect of the whole Indian village scene. Dot and Don in streaked
upper-bodies and gaudy skirts from the waist down, grinned pleasantly
at their New York friends, and posed in a true twin-picture when Mr.
Richards took a snap-shot of the Hopis.
From the Fire-house the crowds went to the first case: a ferocious
lion! Here the visitors saw an astonishing sight! As the truth dawned
upon them, the New Yorkers laughed heartily but said nothing that might
keep away other curious visitors.
A great lion-skin from Miss Selina’s library had been sewed together so
that it appeared as real as when it was alive on the plains of Africa.
Inside this skin, Ned had carefully placed himself, and then Uncle Ben
had sewn him up in the seam where the two sides of the skin met.
The poor lion must have been frightfully hot inside that skin, and he
had to pace up and down the limited cage-room on his hands and feet,
for it would never do to stand up on his hind legs and try to get a
breath of cool air!
As the sight-seers filed past the lion’s cage, the fierce animal pawed
threateningly at the weak, wooden laths which was all that kept him
from springing out at the people.
Most of the circus-goers were already past when a strange howl came
from the inside of that lion-skin:
“Heigh, Uncle Ben! For pity’s sake rip me out of this--I’m smothering
to pieces!”
Some of the visitors were lingering to study the Wild Man from Borneo
in the next cage and heard the freak lion that could talk, and everyone
laughed uproariously.
Jinks was the “Wild Man” and looked the part, too. Chains of corn and
large lima-beans, with here and there a red kidney-bean, strung on
strings were profusely hung about his neck. Wide armlets and anklets
of tin were wound about his limbs and his hair, which was made of a
close-fitted skull-cap with great bunches of hair taken from a mattress
found in the attic of Aunt Selina’s house. His face was frightfully
scarred with _red crayon_ cuts where he had fought men and beasts and
survived; his single garment was a long strip of sheep’s skin wound
about his waist. His body was dark red and shiny with oil, and his
hands toyed dangerously with barbed arrows and a slender bow that now
and then was aimed at his tormentors. Such actions were accompanied
with wild grins that showed fierce orange-rind teeth fitted into the
mouth of the man-eating human!
The red wolf looked so like Crummie that many of the Little Citizens
were tempted to call it by name, and strange to say, the animal acted
as if it knew that name! Overhead, however, the placard plainly stated
that the red wolf exhibited was one of the dangerous kind found in the
Valley of Delight.
“No one kin fool me dat dat’s a wolf! I knows Crummie if no one else
does. Diden’ he save my life in de boat dat day of de picnic?” came
from Prunel in no weak voice, and everyone laughed again at the poor
red wolf. Thereupon the animal wagged its tail.
A strange animal never known to Nature before, was seen in a small
case next to the wolf. It was green and red and white streaked, and
had a stub tail that was orange colored. The nose was snubbed and a
fear-inspiring gleam of teeth projecting from an under-shot jaw would
have made one’s flesh creep had the beast been free. But everyone
heaved sighs of relief to find Aunt Selina’s old pet Bull dog safely
chained in a cage.
“Laws sake! Now how did this dreadful thing happen to poor old Billy.
Ben! Ben! did you paint Billy like this?” cried Miss Selina when she
saw her dog.
“S-sh! don’t spoil the side-shows!” warned a hissing voice behind her,
and Flutey turned to see Mr. Richards’ laughing face close to hers.
“But how will we ever get Billy clean again?” said she.
“It’s only colored grease paint such as movie people use--we’ll drop
him in boiling water and soon scald off the paint,” laughed her
tormentor.
Meredith Starr was the strongest man on earth and was seen lifting
great balls of iron and heavy bars of metal. The spheres he picked up
as easily as if they were feathers were marked 5,000 lbs. each, and
were as large as a barrel.
“Mr. Richards, do tell me what he is lifting?” queried Aunt Selina.
“Can’t you see they are marked iron?”
“Oh, but they aren’t really! They look like hollow paper cubes bronzed
over to look like rusty iron,” replied Flutey.
“Maybe you’re right at that,” laughed Mr. Richards.
The last side-show was a huge cage with a curtain hanging before its
opening. On the curtain was a notice stating:
“This is the smallest baby-elephant ever exhibited in a circus, and the
visitor is requested not to feed it peanuts or crackers, as it does not
yet know how to eat alone.”
Whenever a large crowd gathered before this cage, one of the Police
would make a great flourish of drawing back the curtain. Necks would
crane and those visitors standing in the back could not see the
elephant at all. But a loud shout of merriment would tell all that it
was a good joke, so they waited till the others left when they could go
closer and see the elephant.
It was a little papier-maché toy-elephant such as are sold at Christmas
time for the children’s nursery. There it stood in the center of the
great box and beside it was a great dish of water and a huge bundle of
hay for food.
The fake side-shows being over, the visitors began to fear their old
tease, Mr. Talmage, had played a joke upon them in bringing them so far
to witness nothing at all. So they walked away from the cages wondering
what would take place next; then a few of the Police directed them to
the seats at one end of the diamond.
“What next? Are you going to play a few more jokes on us?” demanded one
of the visitors of a Policeman.
“Naw--the reel circus is jus’ goin’ to start! You see Miss Martin has
charge of our show whiles Mister Uncle Ben agreed to provide side-shows
and wild animals. Now he’s done with his’n.”
“Oh, I see,” said one visitor.
“Thank goodness,” said another.
But the majority of them laughed at the fun and said it was all part of
the game as Barnum said: “An American public loves to be fooled.”
Soon after the audience was seated on the hard wooden benches that
reminded them of the real circus seats at a dollar a seat, Mr.
Richards appeared in the sawdust ring to speak. He was immediately
welcomed with shouts and claps and such a noise from his city friends
that he could not be heard.
When the tumult died down and he began to speak, the noise would begin
anew, and finally he shook his head and stood waiting. The men in the
audience finally grew tired of teasing him, however, and he had his say.
It was to the effect that all the talent about to be seen and heard had
been found and trained at Happy Hills inside of the past month. All
allowance should be made for the handicaps met with in a country camp,
but the patrons would find there was plenty of genuine talent in the
different performers about to make their first appearance in public as
entertainers.