[Illustration: EAGER THRONG AT THE MAIN ENTRANCE.]
On the Road
With a Circus
W. C. THOMPSON
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
NEW AMSTERDAM BOOK COMPANY
1905
Copyright, 1903,
By W. C. THOMPSON
Copyright, 1905,
By NEW AMSTERDAM BOOK COMPANY
_On the Road With a Circus._
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I. PAGE
The Modern Circus, 5
CHAPTER II.
Arrival and Debarkation, 29
CHAPTER III.
Early Scenes on the Lot, 43
CHAPTER IV.
The Parade, 58
CHAPTER V.
The Side-Show, 67
CHAPTER VI.
At the Main Entrance, 86
CHAPTER VII.
The Menagerie Tent, 101
CHAPTER VIII.
Life with the Performers, 116
CHAPTER IX.
Night Scenes and Embarkation, 147
CHAPTER X.
The Circus Detective, 157
CHAPTER XI.
The Autobiography of a Circus Horse, 164
CHAPTER XII.
The Circus Band, 175
CHAPTER XIII.
With the Elephants, 181
CHAPTER XIV.
The General Manager, 197
CHAPTER XV.
American Circus Triumphant, 208
CHAPTER XVI.
The Old-Fashioned Circus, 219
CHAPTER XVII.
The Circus Press Agent, 233
ON THE ROAD WITH A CIRCUS
CHAPTER I
THE MODERN CIRCUS
The faithful recording of daily life with one of the “big shows,”
wandering with it under all vicissitudes, fortunate or adverse, is
the errand on which this book is sent. You and I will travel from the
distraction and tumult of the summer season to the congenial quiet
of winter quarters, and survey operations from the hour when new
and unwonted scenes and sounds startle city quiet or country seat
retirement until the stealthy breaking of the white encampment and
the departure from town. We will scrutinize the entrance of strangers
into strange lands and observe the rising and expansion of the tents
as an army of men stamp their image upon the earth. Our astonished
eye will gaze upon the gorgeous pageant of the parade and returning
to the grounds will peer freely and familiarly about the place of
strange sounds and entrancing sights. We will watch the master mind
of the circus and his associates in counsel and action. We will study
the life, character, and habits of the motley throng of “show” people
and learn of morals and manners, of hopes and fears, of trials and
solicitudes; and we will pass sunny hours on meadows enamelled with
violets and daisies and goldened with buttercups and dandelions, where
the circus is passing its day.
We circus people have so high an opinion of our good qualities that
we are not ashamed to introduce ourselves to you. As pilgrims with
no abiding city, leading a life of multiplied activities and varied
fortunes amid scenes of din and turmoil, hurry and agitation, our
platform is courage, ambition, and energy, governed by honest purpose
and tempered by humanity. We have our infirmities, our faults, and
our sins, but also our virtues, our excellences, and our standards of
perfection, and a discerning world has come no longer to regard us as
unscrupulous invaders, but as invited and welcome guests. The voice of
joy and health resounds through our ranks; we are united in fraternal
good-will unbroken by dissension, our life of weal and woe is ever
invested with peculiar delightful fascination, and boisterous relish
transports itself from town to town. Memory clings with fond tenacity
to halcyon days with the circus.
Sometime between 1820 and 1830 (circus annals tell not exactly the
year), near what is now New York City, while a red-coated band blew
forth a merry melody, a round-top tent swelled upward. The parents
of some of the present-day performers remember the day. It was the
first cloth circus shelter erected in this country, and then what was
formerly an open-air show assumed the dignity and importance of an
under-cover performance. A crude enough affair it was, as compared with
the perfection and finish of the modern circus. The flags and streamers
and bunting which add grace and beauty waved no friendly greeting; the
clamorous welcome of side-show orators and ticket sellers was wanting;
no menagerie offered its accumulated wealth of curious and snarling
beasts; human curiosity had not been awakened by the overpowering
splendor and magnificence of a preliminary parade; there was a lack
of sentiment and excitement and appeal to the senses; only din and
confusion and broiling heat. From this mean beginning has come the
marvellous circus of to-day, involving a business so extensive that few
people possess anything but the vaguest conception of its magnitude,
organization, and methods of operation.
Underlying the pomp and glitter and the odor of sawdust and naphtha
is a system of government and management whose scale and scope are
stupendous and staggering. No human institution is more perfect in
operation and direction. Surely no more flattering tribute could be
paid than that officially given us by the United States Government.
Officers from the army department, skilled veterans in their
profession, critically observed the swift sequence of proceedings
when we showed in Washington--the early arrival of the trains; the
rapid debarkation; the magical growth of the white encampment; the
parade passing with measured tread through deeply lined streets; the
scene on the grounds and at the performances, and the pulling down at
night and the hurried, though orderly, departure. Then Gen. Nelson A.
Miles surveyed the scene and expressed wonder and admiration. Finally
there came a request that two representatives of the department be
permitted to accompany the circus for two weeks. To the Government
had come a realization that the modern circus offered lessons in the
transportation and handling of men and horses, canvas and vehicles.
And when the Barnum & Bailey Show was in Europe, the monarch of one of
the world-powers, visiting under tents incognito, confessed that he
had profited immensely by what he had witnessed, and proposed to put
into immediate effect many of the original working arrangements of the
circus. For instance, astonished at the ease and celerity with which
the heavy circus wagons were run on to the cars by means of a block and
tackle and an inclined plane, he admitted, ruefully, that in his vast
army they had been hoisting their artillery over the sides of the cars.
It remained for the American circus to bring appreciation of the waste
of time and labor.
So to the humble employee of the circus who wanders with it from
place to place, one day in one town and the next perhaps one hundred
miles distant for a period of more than thirty weeks, is a part of
the strange daily life, witnesses the emergencies constantly met and
dealt with and the perplexing obstacles overcome, comes a forcible and
convincing knowledge that it is not an ungodly thing to be questioned
and looked at askance, but a genial, legitimate, business enterprise,
based upon sound principles and conducted upon the highest lines of
ability and responsibility by men who assumed a risk at which the
nerviest professional gambler would hesitate. The amount of capital
invested is several million dollars; no insurance company will give
protection. The dangers of the road are never absent. A cataclysm of
damage suits is a constant peril. Rainy weather, preventing performance
and profit, may be a companion for months. There must be constant
renewal of costly perishable property. Deaths of costly rare animals
may swallow up the receipts of days. Continual other dangers and
losses, of whose frequency, gravity, and magnitude the general public
has no adequate conception, are encountered. Against these ruining
possibilities the circus stakes.
* * * * *
There is a popular misapprehension regarding the profits of the circus
business. Some of the large organizations have continued in existence
for periods of several years without returning a cent on the investment
or at an actual operating loss. Less strongly financed tented shows
succumb. The circus is an infallible register of the monetary condition
of the country. Hard times are reflected in it, and prosperity
fills it with joyous evidence. The daily expenses of our circus are
placed by the management at over $5,000, and a moment’s calculation
discloses that the receipt of this amount of money is not the quick
operation surface conditions often indicate. The average daily free
admissions are eleven hundred. These are largely the tickets given for
bill-posting privileges. This territory embraces, generally, forty
miles on the lines of all converging railroads and a distance of twenty
miles in both directions from the tracks. City officials, newspapers,
and a throng of others claim the remaining gratuitous entrance passes.
Sometimes the number is larger. In one city we have been obliged to
place three thousand free tickets.
Experienced circus owners reckon that one-quarter of the attendance
comprises children under nine years of age and who pay half-rate,
twenty-five cents. Thus it will be seen that some thirteen thousand
persons, including those with free tickets, must pass the door each
day before a dollar’s profit has been yielded from this source for the
management. Our “big top’s” capacity is ten thousand persons. One
realizes, after consideration of these facts and figures, how necessary
it is that there be few vacant seats at either performance to insure a
profit for the day, and how often the net revenue is supplied entirely
by side-show, peanuts, popcorn, lemonade, and other small departments.
Moreover, when the casual observer convinces himself that the huge tent
is full to repletion, he is often badly mistaken. The circus usher must
perform his duty with great care and systematic thoroughness, else he
will permit the man who has paid for one seat to occupy two or more.
* * * * *
The circus does not run its season, dissolve, and disperse. In winter
the entire establishment is maintained. Only the performers and
workmen are dropped, and with the former this is generally a mere
suspension of service, for contracts are frequently made for several
years. Owners, managers, contracting agents, advertising agents, press
agents, treasurer, bookkeepers, and others, find no idle moments.
Rolling stock, suffering from the hard effects of a season’s campaign,
needs painter and carpenter; new acts and novelties must be secured
to keep abreast of the times; the new route must be laid out and
considered; and to do this the management must know the population
and character of every town; have information of the condition of
business, vicissitudes of the year and the prospects for the coming
season; know the national, state, and municipal law and the character
of licenses, and the price of food for man and beast; keep track of
floods, droughts, or disasters to crops or people; be conversant with
the periods of ploughing and harvesting; learn what railroads run in
and out of town, their grades and condition, the extent, strength, and
height of tunnels and bridges and the relative positions of railroad
yards and the show lot; and find out the condition of the soil wherever
the circus is booked in case of rain, and provide in advance for such
a contingency. The circus is a fair-weather show and the management
must have a definite knowledge of wet and dry seasons, to avoid
encountering, so far as human foresight is possible, unpropitious
meteorological conditions.
The question of transportation is the most careful one involved, and
upon its cost and facilities the route of the circus is in a great
measure determined. For instance, up in agricultural Windsor county,
in southeastern Vermont, nestles the village of White River Junction.
It boasts a weekly newspaper, a public school, and a national and a
savings bank. Its population does not exceed fifteen hundred; yet the
big circuses make annual pilgrimages thither because it is a local
trade centre, the Boston and Maine, Central Vermont and Woodstock
railroads converge upon it, and there the White and Connecticut
rivers merge their waters. Its selection for exhibition purposes is
a good illustration of the important part transportation facilities
play in arranging routes. White River Junction itself would not
turn out patrons enough to pay for the menagerie’s food, but the
throngs conveyed there by train and boat always fill the tents. So
it is all over the country, barring the large cities. It is not so
much the character and size of the place picked for the tents as its
topographical position and drawing powers.
All through the winter a corps of women is busy on new uniforms and
trappings for man, woman, and beast. There are rich plush and gold
bullion galore in this workshop. The pretty spangles that will glitter
in the ring are being sewed in place, the elephants are getting new
jackets of royal purple and gold, and the camels are being fitted
out afresh for the parade. Some of these gorgeous fittings are very
expensive, but the circus management calculates that they must be
renewed every year. The outlay for hats, boots, and other articles of
attire for the army is heavy and ceaseless.
* * * * *
Circus day, to the men who have hundreds of thousands of dollars
invested, it will be seen, means the culmination of long and careful
and systematic preparation. To get ready for the day has been the
work of many months and has employed the talents and attention of men
wonderfully expert in their particular fields. The advance staff of
one of the “big shows” usually consists of a general agent, a railway
contractor, an executive agent, several general contracting agents,
and assistants; car No. 1, carrying eighteen to twenty persons; first
regular advertising car No. 2, bearing the chief press agent, car
manager, and from twenty to twenty-five men; car No. 3, with eighteen
to twenty men; car No. 4, carrying a special press agent and car
manager and from twelve to fourteen men, including “route riders” and
special ticket agents; next and finally, the “layer-out,” who is one
day ahead of the circus.
The railroad contractor is the first man out. He is familiar to the
finest details with every railroad in the country--its mileage,
connections, yard facilities, bridges and tunnels. He plans, besides
arranging for the transportation of the circus trains, the special
excursions which will converge upon the town on the specified day of
exhibition. The general contracting agent follows. He makes contracts
for feed, lot, accommodations for advance men, livery teams, and
billboards. The contracts of these two men involve many thousands of
dollars every week and must pass the rigid scrutiny of the experienced
general agent. No detail of the business is unfamiliar to him.
Car No. 1 is professionally known as the “skirmishing car.” It is
most frequently called into service to fight opposition. As soon as
a railway contractor of a rival circus puts in an appearance on the
route the general manager is promptly notified. There is at once a
formidable concentration of forces at the threatened point. No stone is
left unturned or chance overlooked to gain an advantage; and the circus
man is resourceful of schemes and plots. Billboards, barns, fences,
hedges, trees, windows, and all other available space is bought up with
apparently reckless expenditures. Banners, printed on muslin, are swung
from walls and awnings. Sometimes more money than will be realized on
show day is spent in this fight for publicity, but the circus regrets
not a cent of it if the opposition has been taught a lesson and will
not venture again to cross the path.
Attached to a passenger train and about four weeks ahead of the show,
comes car No. 2. The general contracting press agent is aboard with his
advertising cuts and prepared advertising matter, or keeping pace with
it on the route. Sometimes there is a steam calliope, which produces
marvellous sonorific effects at sundown, to the dismay of all who live
in the immediate neighborhood, but calling obtrusive attention to the
approach of the circus. The force of men bills and lithographs for
miles around. Each team has a native driver who knows every road and
every inhospitable bulldog. Permission is always secured from the owner
or lessee of the spot selected for decoration, for without his consent,
the astute showman knows, a poster becomes soon a thing of shreds and
tatters. In return for the privilege an order is given on the circus
for tickets, which is promptly honored if the agreement has been
honestly kept.
The men on two other cars see to it that the work of their predecessors
is followed up carefully. Various neglected preliminary work is in
their charge. They replace posters torn down or mutilated and try
to find new points of advantage. They check up and report every
discrepancy of the other advance men, too, and send a detailed report
to the general agent. The last man before the arrival of the circus is
the “layer-out” or “twenty-four-hour man.” He inspects the lot, fixes
the route of the procession, and performs a variety of other final
duties.
Sometimes a stereopticon man is sent out, but not unless there is
opposition or the outlook for the day’s business is bad. He stretches
a big white sheet on a popular corner and entertains the town for an
evening, adroitly advertising the show and putting the people in good
humor.
A general agent estimates for me that the score of pretentious circuses
employ, during at least seven months of the year, an average of fifty
bill-posters each, making a total of six hundred men, outside of
agents, contractors, inspectors, etc. To properly transport, supply,
and provide for these employees it requires not less than thirty-six
advertising cars, which, in the course of a season, cover every part
of the American continent and the better part of Europe. These men
post upward of one hundred and seventy thousand sheets of paper daily,
and as their display of paper usually has a thirty days’ showing for
each day’s exhibition, it is safe to estimate that from five millions
to five millions two hundred thousand sheets are in sight for six
months of the year. To-day the public often measures the value of
an enterprise largely by the size and character of its posters. The
development of poster printing and bill posting is due largely to the
demands of the circus. Not all the commercial advertisers put together
use posters so liberally as do the combined circus interests. The
requirements of the circus built the boards and the results obtained
forced the business to become a permanent and recognized factor in
active commercial life.
One big circus used in a season seventy-seven kinds of posters, varying
in size from one to sixty sheets and let loose on the public twelve
publications, from a four-sheet to a twenty-page courier. They had a
total edition of five million four hundred thousand copies.
The elevated standard of morality among circus men and women is a
revelation to one who lives with them from day to day and is their
close companion. The atmosphere and environment seem charged with
health and happiness, virtue and vigor. Drunkenness is not tolerated in
any form. Immediate discharge, no matter who or what the rank of the
offender, is its penalty, and except in isolated instances among the
canvasmen there is seldom provocation for punishment. Of other vices
which are prevalent in many walks of life there is no evidence. The
very nature of the business, with its claims on brain and body, forbids
immoral or vicious excesses. Those who indulge in them are looked
upon with coldness by their associates and made to feel themselves
delinquents. Gambling is strictly prohibited, and fines are imposed
upon the employee who is heard using profane or vulgar language. The
women of the circus are not permitted even to engage in conversation
with any one not directly connected with the show. Most of them spend a
few hours each Sunday in church. A fine awaits the luckless man caught
exchanging words with an outside woman. It is the effort and aim of the
management, too, to inculcate a spirit of good-fellowship and enduring
affection, founded upon mutual respect and esteem. It demands that all
be obliging and civil, answer questions politely, assist patrons in
distress, smooth ruffled tempers, in short, make people who go to the
circus feel at home, have a good time, and want to come again.
* * * * *
Circus folk, like sailors, are perhaps the most superstitious people
in the world. They have numerous curious beliefs and all possess pet
superstitions. Disease, disaster and death are presaged in their minds
by signs and wonders. Few are without amulets and charms. Four-leafed
clovers, made as pendants in silver or glass, and rabbits’ feet set in
silver are favorites to ward off evil. Many have horseshoes nailed to
their trunks for luck. To see three white horses in succession and no
red-headed woman is a forerunner of good luck. So, too, they declare,
is the sight of a boxed corpse in a railroad station as the train
rolls in. It is an ill omen to catch a glimpse of the death receptacle
when leaving a town. Tapping a hunchback on his hump is sure to result
favorably, and a white speck showing on the finger nail indicates
auspicious things. The appearance of a white foamy spot on the surface
of a cup of coffee or tea denotes “money,” and should be at once
swallowed intact. To open an umbrella in a house is sure to result in a
shower of trouble, and one’s future is risked by going under a ladder.
Breaking a mirror is significant of death and seven years’ ill-luck. If
undergarments are put on wrong side out, it is tempting fate to change
them until removed for the night. A peacock’s presence is fraught with
promise of dire evil, and a stuffed bird or a fan of its feathers bodes
ill for the owner. To eat while a bell is tolling for a funeral will
bring misfortune. The hooting of owls at night is ominous of death. Bad
luck may be expected if a mouse gnaws a gown. To rock an empty cradle
will entail injury to the child who should occupy it. Salt spilt at
the table is a warning of a quarrel, unless a pinch of the mineral is
promptly thrown over the right shoulder. Stray cats have their terrors,
but a black one is welcome.
Many performers invariably go into the ring putting the right foot
forward. If they neglect to do this they back out and re-enter. All
believe a cross-eyed man should never be permitted inside, the tents;
evil times accompany him. Few foreigners fail to cross themselves
before performing, and nearly all wear strange charms. Many circus
people regard a color or a combination of colors as a hoodoo. None
would venture to cross a funeral, and I have seen those who turn their
backs until a death procession has passed out of sight and hearing. All
believe Friday an unlucky day, and are sure there are fortunate and
unfortunate hours in every day. If Friday falls on the thirteenth day
of a month, it will bring misfortune, for thirteen cuts a wide swath in
the profession.
In marked contrast to the popular notions of the rank and file of
circus men is the practice of Mr. James A. Bailey, who founds his
business conduct along lines tending to discourage superstition. Friday
is his accepted choice upon which to make an important move--the Barnum
& Bailey show left America on Friday--and he welcomes the figure 13 in
any transaction. His marvellously successful career perplexes credulous
associates.
* * * * *
The slang and colloquialisms of the circus form a secret language in
themselves, a collection of jargon, racy, pungent, and pregnant of
meaning, and always used in familiar conversation. “Stall,” as noun
or verb, is a popular and widely employed expression. It indicates
anything tending to conceal real intention, a confederate who diverts
attention, an accomplice under cover. For instance, “I am stalling
for a walkaway,” if I refrain from notifying a customer that he has
forgotten his change. The “walkaway,” a flurried, absent-minded, or
hurrying person who leaves his return money behind, is legion and a
constant source of joy to the ticket-seller. “Nix” is a significant
circus watchword, whose utterance generally is the signal announcing
the approach of some one in authority or who is not a confidant. It is
used, too, as the curt form of request to desist from word or deed. The
exhibition place is never anything but a “lot” in circus parlance, and
the organization itself is referred to as the “show.” A “snack-stand”
is the improvised structure at railroad depot or show ground where a
hasty bite of food can be obtained. The men who sell candy, popcorn,
lemonade and the like are “butchers.” The tents are “tops” in the
circus vocabulary. The canvas under which the performance is given is
known as the “big top,” the eating tent as the “cook top,” and so on.
One might travel a season with a circus and not hear the word tent
mentioned. The side-show is the “kid show,” as the vernacular of the
profession has it.
Employees are “working” whether driving stakes, throwing somersaults,
or sitting on exhibition as a curiosity. The broad license of the
word is amusing to the stranger who hears the Albino, whose sole
occupation is to receive the stares of side-show visitors, remark
that “she didn’t work yesterday,” but remained in the car all day.
The rallying-cry, “Hey Rube!” has become a vague memory among modern
circuses. Ample police protection is assured nowadays, the character of
circus employees is higher and the discipline is sterner, and the days
of sanguinary encounters among themselves or with town rowdies are gone
forever. The inaugural procession around the tent is the circus man’s
“tournament.” A “grafting” show is the circus with dishonest motives,
as described in another chapter, and its “fixer” or “squarer” is the
man who makes the corrupt arrangement with town officials. In circus
dialect “yap” and “simp” indicate a credulous rustic who is easy prey
for sharpers.
The policeman in plain clothes is rather contemptuously referred to
as a “flattie.” A trunk is known as a “keester” and a valise as a
“turkey.” Circus dialect for a man is always “guy,” and the proprietor
of the show is invariably styled “the main guy,” or the “main squeeze.”
The former appellation is probably adapted from the fact that the
main guy rope holds the tent in position. To “fan a guy” is to make
an examination to discover whether or not he is carrying concealed
weapons. A pocketbook is a “leather,” a watch a “super,” and a watch
chain a “slang.” “Lid” signifies a hat and a ticket is called a
“fake.” A complimentary ticket or a railroad pass has no other name
than “brod.” An elephant in circus language is never anything except a
“bull.” The showman’s word for peanuts is “redhots,” and their lemonade
concomitant is designated “juice.” “Plain juice” is water. Human eyes
are “lamps,” and heads are chosen “nuts.”
The posters and lithographs sent out in advance are “paper,” and the
programmes and other literature are distinguished as “soft stuff.”
Side-show orators have the cognomens “spielers” and “blowers,” and the
employee who has charge of the naphtha torches, which are “beacons” in
the circus world, is known as the “chandelier man.” Reserved seats
are alluded to as “reserved,” and all other allotted sitting space
is termed “the blues,” derived from the painted color of the boards.
Clowns are “joys” and the other performers “kinkers.”
* * * * *
The history of the circus records many disasters by fire, wind,
and wreck, but only a few solitary instances in which patrons have
suffered. In none of the vocations of life, in times of crisis, are
given better examples of energy, daring, discipline, and power of
command and obedience. For more than a score of years, since the old
method of overland horse and wagon mode of transportation was abandoned
for the swift, modern steam-engine way, hardly a year has failed to
catalogue a catastrophe entailing loss of life and property and human
and animal misery. Yet death and damage are confined to the ranks of
the show people.
[Illustration: CIRCUS ENCAMPMENT AT EARLY DAWN.]
Railroads are notoriously indifferent to the interests of the long,
heavy circus trains in their temporary keeping. Accidents in transit
are frequent. A misplaced switch, confusion in running schedules, a
careless engineer or trainman, may bring impoverishing adversity. The
circus is never exempt from peril, when planted for the day in apparent
security, when journeying from town to town or when housed in wood or
brick. Misfortune follows, too, even to winter quarters, where,
perhaps, general impression assumes to the circus owner freedom from
care and apprehension. There are many things conspiring to make him old
before his time.
* * * * *
The Southern States generally yield good profits, but the crowds are
more disorderly, often, than in any other section of the country. Guns
protrude from many pockets and their owners are eager for a chance to
brandish or discharge them. Inflamed by whiskey, these circus visitors
are a constant menace to life and property. It is only by an exercise
of great diplomacy that we escape frequent trouble. Mississippi is
greatly accredited among showmen with being the most dangerous State
in the Union, as is the police force of Philadelphia called the most
efficient for their purposes. The New York bluecoats are called upon
for little display of their ability and organization with the circus
established in the stone and wood of Madison Square Garden. Municipal
officers throughout the South have the reputation, whether justified or
not, of being past grand masters in the subtle art of “shake-down,” the
circus man’s parlance for palpably unfair means of extracting money.
Extortionate fees are levied for all privileges, and in many cities
hordes of professional damage seekers await a pretense of excuse for
demanding money.
In one city, for instance, the owner of the land on which we exhibited
gave plain directions as to its area and they were abided by. At eleven
o’clock, when all the preliminary work of the day had been performed,
his neighbor rushed to the lot and demanded four hundred dollars; his
property, a worthless patch of rocky soil, had been encroached upon six
feet by one end of the “big top!” It was a frank attempt at extortion
and the native nursed the conviction that the circus was powerless to
do aught but pay. Little did he imagine the resourceful energy of the
showman in a crisis! Under the owner’s personal supervision, the big
reaches of canvas were levelled again, while the landholder stood by in
amazement. At noon, an hour and a half after the unreasonable demand,
the circus had moved itself the required distance and taught the
Southerner a lesson he will not forget.
The incident is an example of the deliberate purpose of many persons
to take unfair advantage of the circus and illustrates how completely
their nefarious plans sometimes go awry.
Trouble came unceasing that same day. The crowd was ugly and seeking
fight, and some of its members even invaded the rings and insulted
performers. We were told that night that ours was the only circus that
ever left town without undergoing the annoyance of having the side
ropes cut, a playful prank of the place. On the night journey from lot
to cars, the hippopotamus cage tipped over and was righted with great
difficulty, while the huge inmate roared his fright and disapproval.
Later, the big vehicle conveying the side-show paraphernalia collapsed
near the same spot and made more work and delay, and filled the roughs
with glee at our plight. The colored “snack stand” proprietors, who,
of course, are no part of the show, were robbed of their proceeds by
native thieves, amid great wailing, and a colored man was killed by the
cars in the confusion at the loading place. The circus men were the
only witnesses to rush to him in the hope of giving relief. Never were
men, women, and children happier over a change of scene than when our
trains moved to new environments.
During the night run, a desperate attempt was made to rob the money
wagon. Two men were busily working with brace and bit and hammer and
saw, when the watchman, patrolling his lonely beat along the line
of cars, came upon them. They jumped from the slow-moving train and
escaped in the darkness.
* * * * *
The well-organized circus seldom misses a performance. Rain and mud are
its enemies, but their combined endeavors only infrequently prevent
erection of tents, and the parade and exhibition which then infallibly
follow. There are instances in which the elements have upset plans for
two or three successive days, but conditions are seldom so unkind.
Shovel and pickaxe and beds of absorbing straw accomplish wonders. If
denied the opportunity to erect the “big top,” sometimes the show is
given in the less expansive menagerie tent and the animal cages are
kept on the cars. The enforced arrangement is unsatisfactory to circus
man and patron, but to the former it gives the consolation that the day
will not be entirely without receipts.
The recuperative powers of the circus are marvellous. Many a show which
has been almost entirely exterminated by a railroad wreck or other
disaster has within a few weeks again taken up the thread of dates. The
reason for this quick restoration is that duplicates of almost every
necessity can be obtained. A hurry call brings a new tent to replace
the damaged one. Men who make a business of supplying circus menageries
with animals ship a great new variety at once, and in an incredibly
short time the renewed show is on the move once more.