Once when I was with Dan Rice on the river circus we showed at Memphis.
At this place a certain fellow was loud in his denunciation of Dan and
the show. He was a source of great annoyance to the showman and had
also made himself very unpopular by declaiming against slavery. In
retaliation Dan entered the ring and returned the compliment in kind.
He capped the climax by singing a song in which he described his enemy
as playing cards with a negro on a log, and so boldly was this done
that the people believed it and the fellow became so exasperated that
he threatened to shoot Dan. The clown, however, defied him, and
continued ridiculing him until the man was actually obliged to leave
the city in a hurry.
Dan also had trouble at Yazoo City, Mississippi. He had, it appears, on
a former visit, flogged a prominent man there, and the latter had sworn
to shoot him on sight. One night when Dan was clowning in the ring the
prominent citizen entered and drew his revolver to kill. A plucky
bystander, however, knocked the iron from his hand and prevented
bloodshed. The scene that followed I shall never forget. Dan stood
undaunted in the ring, called the man a coward and dared him to shoot.
His audience went into ecstacies over such an exhibition of bravery and
applauded to the echo. Whereupon Dan, stimulated to further efforts,
poured forth a torrent of the most stinging denunciation of cowards
that ever fell from mortal lips. I have often wondered where Dan picked
up such a command of language.
[Illustration: "A SPECTATOR JUMPED INTO THE RING AND TRIED TO SHOOT THE
CLOWN."]
At that time he was not an educated man, although years after, when
visiting him at his magnificent house at Girard, Pa., I found that he
had a well-stocked private library, and he had certainly become an
exceedingly well-read man.