BUT WE ALL LIKE IT
And now for just a little confidential chat between ourselves,
regarding some of the things which make us happy.
Nearly everything else in the world has changed. In the last fifty
years we’ve had a topsy-turvy affair of progress and education,
sophistication, and advancement. Everything has gone forward; this old
globe has become a swift-moving, wiseacre thing, in which only one
relic remains of a previous time:
We still like to be bunked!
Not only like it, but love it, and demand it. Not only bunked in new
ways and new methods, but in the old, familiar ways as well; in fact,
by the identical tricks which were in vogue in the days when Barnum
hurt the feelings of our sophisticated grandparents by announcing
frankly that one of their real wants was the want to be humbugged!
In fact, so far as amusement is concerned, there is practically no
change in human nature as regards its desire to be flimflammed. Customs
may change; moral laws grow more flexible or rigid, as the case may be;
wars come and go while diplomats change the whole face of the earth;
and psycho-analysts declare that the human race has gone through a
crucible, to emerge a newer, different thing. But just the same, deep
down in the hearts of all of us, there is one thing which remains the
same, calling incessantly:
“Bunk me again; I like it!”
Understand, however, when the term “bunk” is used, bunk is meant, and
not bunco. The shorter word may be a derivative of the other, but in
its new form it means something vastly different from the older and
more vicious expression. Bunco is reminiscent of gold bricks, green
goods, sewing-machine promissory-note contracts, the selling of the
Woolworth Building, the three-shell game, short change and three-card
monte. Bunk is something entirely different, a more innocent manner
of getting the money and at the same time pleasing the person who has
done the paying. Bunco cannot be worked without arousing one certain
thing in the victim,—cupidity. He believes he is going to get something
for nothing, by cheating the other fellow. He ends up by being cheated
himself and by racing to the police station to tell what thieves the
other men were. Bunk requires also one ingredient, that of curiosity,
and ends in an entirely different manner; the bunker is pleased, the
bunkee is pleased, perhaps knowing all the time that his enjoyment was
gained by his susceptibility to the attractions of a palpable fake. But
perhaps an illustration would serve better.
In the “personal columns” of lax newspapers, one often sees such
advertisements as the following:
Will some gallant gentleman take pity on the loneliness of a young,
pretty widow of 35, possessed of a fair fortune bequeathed by her
former husband? Will make wonderful wife to right man. Widow, Box 188.
Now, if you’re “the right man,” you won’t answer. In the first place,
you know that no pretty widow possessed of a fortune need advertise
for a husband. But if you have a strain of cupidity uppermost in your
nature, you’ll see only one line in that advertisement: “possessed of a
fair fortune, bequeathed by her former husband.” You can see yourself
with that fortune; and you know very well that if you’re lucky enough
to get that widow, it won’t be long before that fortune is in your
hands. So you answer the advertisement, telling some ten or twenty lies
about yourself to make an impression. Then you receive a reply!
However, it doesn’t come from the widow. It is signed by her agent,
who regrets to state that there have been so many answers to the
advertisement that it is impossible for the young woman to answer each
one personally. However, your letter has shown such sterling qualities,
that he would like to have further correspondence with you, with a
view to settling the matter for the widow and arranging the marriage.
You answer that letter. He answers yours. More correspondence ensues.
It finally comes to a point where, if you can satisfy the agent that
you are not a fortune hunter, but a good, honest young man looking for
a loving wife, he is absolutely sure that the wedding is the same as
settled. All that is necessary is for you to put a thousand dollars in
his hands, as a guarantee of your good faith, and everything’s arranged.
The fortune is in your grasp! You get that thousand dollars some way.
You are so busy thinking about the fact that you are going to cheat
that widow of her fortune that you forget entirely that other cheats
may be at work. You deposit the thousand dollars—and wait. And wait and
wait and wait. Then you report to the police that you’ve been robbed.
That’s bunco.
Bunk is something entirely different, a far more innocent game in
which no one is really injured, and in which the components are
curiosity, amiability, a self-hypnotism which makes the victim believe
he’s happier for the bunking, and which often, through its sheer
foolishness, results in amusement for every one concerned. Just as an
example:
Two rival ice companies operate in a fair-sized town on one of the
Great Lakes. One of them deals in artificial ice, the other in natural.
And one of them—it wouldn’t be fair to state which—made the discovery
that its ice was harder and lasted longer than the product of the rival
firm.
The man at the head of the company was well-versed in bunk. He didn’t
do the usual thing—that of advertising the hardness and long-lasting
qualities of his ice in the newspapers. Instead he hired a few
judicious persons to start a series of vile rumors against his own
company! The product of the other ice manufacturer was far superior; it
would last twice as long! Not until these rumors were well circulated
did the shrewd ice manufacturer do his advertising. Then he answered
the charges in a page advertisement and challenged his rival to an “ice
contest.”
No one in town ever had heard of an ice contest. Neither had the
promoter, for that matter, until the idea occurred to him. The plan
was for each company to place a chunk of ice of the same weight in the
public square, and let the sun do its worst. The ice that lasted the
longest naturally would be the best.
The other company fell into the snare. The plans were made, and the
town gathered to see the ice contest! Now, of all amusements that
might be imagined, a race between two cakes of ice for the longevity
championship belt hardly could be called the most exciting. Yet it is
a matter of record that on the day of that ice race, half the town
thronged the square to watch two pieces of water crystal melt slowly
away, and bets were made, running as high as fifty dollars a side!
More interest was created in ice during that one day than in all the
previous history of the town! Naturally, the promoter’s cake came
under the wire an easy winner, and the proceeds of his business jumped
a hundred per cent. overnight! He might have used the usual methods
forever without more than a gradual increase. But he understood the
fine art of bunk, profited thereby and every one was happy,—except the
rival concern.
As a matter of fact, the practise of bunk has become one of the allied
arts in American promotion. Time was when only such men as P. T.
Barnum practised it. To-day, however, it is a widespread affair that
takes in nearly every business, every enterprise in the country. Nine
out of ten fire-and-closing-out sales are bunk,—simply another manner
of turning old stock which could not be sold at an ordinary sale,
but which travels over the counters quickly when the buying public
believes that necessity forces the owners to place it on sale. The
motion-picture companies are bunk artists extraordinary, with their
personal appearances, their “blurbs” in the various trade magazines,
their super this and super-super that, and their inevitable romance
of everything. Did you ever stop to think that nearly every one who
amounts to anything in pictures is simply saturated with romance?
There’s not a marriage that isn’t romantic, not a family that isn’t the
happiest on earth; superlatives of a land of enchantment are everywhere
in the world of the motion picture. All for one purpose: to create
romantic thoughts in the minds of readers, and a desire, now that they
have read romance, to see it. Whereupon they go to the pictures.
Politicians use it; you know they’re not going to keep their campaign
promises when you vote. But you smile in forgiving fashion and tell
yourself that it’s just part of the game. It is; part of the bunk of
being a politician! The preacher who tells his congregation that the
church must be abreast of the times and puts a jazz band in his church
on Sunday is practising the game of bunk. The hotels which call pork
and beans by a French name and double their prices for same are merely
“slipping over the bunk.” Only pork and beans, it is true, but the
name seems to add something to the taste, and you pay the extra price
gladly. The society woman who “consents” to go into the movies,—bunk
again. More, it is simply a revival of that old, old trick practised
years ago on the stage until it became worn out in that field, dressed
up and refurnished for a new line of endeavor. What’s more, it works!
For that matter, even the railroads are not immune.
You’ve perhaps ridden from New York to Chicago on an “extra fare”
train. You’ve paid eight perfectly good dollars for the privilege and
lolled in your seat in the supreme satisfaction of knowing that if the
train is more than fifty-five minutes late, the railroad will be forced
to give you back a dollar an hour for every hour of delay. Therein lies
the secret of the success of the extra fare train,—that refund. If the
ordinary passenger didn’t know he was going to force the railroad into
giving back part of his money, should the train be late, the popularity
of paying eight dollars more for a ride between New York and Chicago
might pall. Railroads are looked upon as octopi—or puses, whichever you
choose. The public has paid them much money, and the public is tickled
when it can make them pay some of it back. So the public rushes for the
extra fare train, feeling that even should the thing be late, there’ll
be a lot of satisfaction in that refund. Nor does the public stop for
a moment to consider that it’s a rare, rare thing that a fast train
is more than thirty minutes late, and that the railroad company can
count on every cent of its extra fare money ninety-nine times out of a
hundred! More, that even should the train be a full eight hours late—or
even twenty hours late—what would the payee have gained over the slow
train? Nothing at all, except the disappointment of believing he was
going to reach a certain town eight hours ahead of another train, and
failing to do it! Of course, the railroads merely classify it all as
shrewd business. But a showman would call it bunk.
It even invades restaurants, this practise of the bunk. Not long
ago I sat in a big New York night café which caters largely to the
out-of-town trade. I had with me as a guest a man from Kansas City.
The waiter approached and took the order. Then, with a furtive glance
about the big room, he placed the menu card to his lips, and from its
protection asked, sotto voce:
“What’ll it be to drink?”
I’d been there before,—and ordered coffee. But the eyes of the man from
Kansas City glowed with the light of adventure.
“What can we get?” he asked.
“Leave it to me,” came the guarded answer from behind the menu card.
The Kansas City man “left it.” Ten minutes later, the waiter returned
with something in a cocktail glass,—something that looked like a Bronx,
but which was merely a mixture of a dash of pepper and a conglomeration
of non-alcoholic “make-believes.” The Kansas City man drank it greedily
and motioned the waiter nearer.
“Do it again,” he ordered. But the glum-faced servant shook his head.
“Sorry,” he announced in the saddest of sad tones, “but we can serve
only one to a patron. Supply’s pretty short, you know.”
Whereupon the Kansas City man went home, proclaiming loudly that he
had been served a cocktail right out in the open at the so-and-so
restaurant and that the place had protection that a battleship couldn’t
break through. If the waiter had served him three or four of the
things, enough to produce a well-formulated “kick,” and if the “kick”
had not appeared, there might have been a different story. But the
waiter didn’t; he served one ten-cent drink, told not a single lie,
gave the man a thrill and charged him a dollar. With the result that
every one was happy. So goeth the bunk!
Naturally, however, since the practise of bunkery originated in the
outdoor show business, it is there that it thrives to its greatest
extent, and there it has achieved some of its biggest victories. Once
the disease has seized its victims, there is nothing that can compete
against it. Art, science, business,—everything must fall before it.
Just as an example, let’s go back into history for one comparison, then
face the present for another. In the days of P. T. Barnum, this showman
became the possessor of one Charles Stratton, a midget whose height
was only thirty-one inches, and whose name he changed to “General” Tom
Thumb. Then he took him to London for an exhibition in Egyptian Hall.
About the same time, Robert Benjamin Haydon, one of England’s greatest
painters, placed the last brush-touch upon his masterpiece, “The
Banishment of Aristides,” and decided to exhibit it in another part
of Egyptian Hall. It became a contest between art and bunk, between
a masterpiece and a person who had no other claim to public interest
than that he was not quite half as large as the ordinary human being.
The title of “General” was a fake; the name of Tom Thumb was a fake.
Whatever was told of his history, lineage and accomplishments was
largely fakery, simply because there never was a lecture on a freak
that was otherwise. But—
A week passed in the battle of the midget and the masterpiece. At the
end of that time, there was an accounting in which it was found that
“General” Tom Thumb had held the public interest to the extent of three
thousand dollars in admissions, while the “Banishment of Aristides” had
brought in exactly thirty-four dollars and sixty cents. Whereupon the
painter went out and shot himself, while General Tom Thumb continued to
roll in the shekels.
That, of course, was many years ago. But have times changed since then?
Have they? Two years ago I was in a fair-sized city of the Middle West,
and happened in on a quarrelsome meeting of a Chautauqua committee. It
all resolved itself into the fact that the city council had allowed
a small five-car carnival company the privilege of exhibiting in
town on the same days as the Chautauqua, and while the educational
entertainment was literally starving, the carnival was reaping a
harvest because of the exhibition of a “pit show” containing four
“pigmy cannibals” which were supposed to live on raw dog. I went to
the Chautauqua. Then I went to the carnival, where the “pit show” of
the “pigmy cannibals” was a thing of constant crowds. Under a new name
and a new ballyhoo, the cannibals were reaping a harvest. The year
before they had been the “last four survivors of the Ancient Aztec
tribe.” To the show world they were what is known as “pinheads,” and a
pin head is nothing more than a certain type of idiot, whose lack of
development shows in stature and in the head, which is barely larger
than an orange. Circus and carnival men obtain them for the most part
in Mexican and half-breed settlements, paying a royalty for them to the
parents instead of the customary wages. Heartless? In a manner, yes.
But on the other hand it often is more humane than otherwise. They are
better treated, perhaps, than in the home they left. They are well fed,
well cared for and clothed in the winter, and what is most important,
the very thing which takes away their earning power forms their means
of livelihood! However, the fact remains that they are idiots, nothing
more, not persons with undeveloped brains, but with practically no
brains whatever. This accounts for the small, conical shape of their
heads and their slanting features; much more room is occupied by their
jaws than by their cerebrum and cerebellum. They speak no English,
for the reason that they have the brain capacity to utter only a few
guttural sounds. The “dog feast” was Belgian hare. So there you are!
The whole thing is that art or enlightenment or anything else hasn’t
a chance against a good freak, whether it be human or a freak of
achievement; once you’re in the humor for being bunked, you don’t
desire any one to interfere with your enjoyment!
Therein lies one of the secrets of bunk as it is practised in the
amusement world. There are others, several of them, but they all are
aided and abetted by that desire, which, like the measles, or the pip,
attacks the rich and poor, educated and uneducated alike. I’ve been in
the show game since I was a boy of sixteen. I’m a bit old and bald now.
Last year, in Chicago, I had a very important engagement. One block
from my destination was a “store show” with an “exact reproduction of
the assassination of the Russian Czar and his family in wax figures.”
This was the first true account ever given of this mysterious, yet
historical thing. The “spieler” said so. The inside lecturer, who
talked through an interpreter, was Ivan Pietrovitch, one of the very
members of the firing squad which had ended the life of Czar Nicholas.
For the first time in history, the truth could become known!
Did I stop to think what would have happened if a member of that firing
squad really had come to America,—if he could have gotten past the
immigration authorities? Did I even consider the fact that his picture
would have been in every paper in the country, that a half dozen
syndicates would have been struggling for his story, that news-reel
photographers would have put him into the movies the minute he landed,
and that his true account, supplemented by photographs and documents,
would have been a matter of real, live news? Did I think of it? I
did not. I just wanted to be bunked about that time, so I forgot my
engagement and went in!
Nor is it all done without thinking beforehand. More often it happens
when the victim knows that he is paying his money to see a fake, and
does it deliberately, joyously, “just to see what it will be like.” For
instance, the gypsy fortune teller.
If you don’t know that a gypsy fortune teller is a fake of the first
water, it’s because you’re either too superstitious to be comfortable,
or just plain ignorant. But you’ve had your fortune told. You’ve gone
away happy and satisfied.
At more than one fair, I have seen a couple halt before a “mitt joint”
where a greasy Mexican or Syrian or anything else but a gypsy stands,
dressed in dirty red calico, and announcing in broken English that she
can tell your past, present and future. A moment of hesitancy. Then:
“Let’s have our fortunes told!”
“Oh, she’s just a fake.”
“I know, but she might tell us something!”
So in they go. The fortune teller asks them when they were born,—and
then tells them how old they are. She then asks for a piece of
money—which she keeps in addition to the fee paid—and places it upon
the bunkee’s forehead.
“You will live ver’ long,” she announces. “You will be ver’ hap’. You
will have three children. You will mar’ the girl you love. You will
succeed in business. You will lose a lit’ mon’, but make much more
back. Zat is all.”
[Illustration: “AND UPON THIS PLATFORM—!” A SIDE-SHOW CROWD. _Page 60._]
All that for fifty cents. The other member gets the same thing. Out
they go, pleased. They’re going to marry, have money, three children—
There’s the sticking point. They don’t want three children. Well, maybe
that gypsy was wrong. Anyway, there’s another “mitt joint” just a few
feet ahead. In they go. This time they’re going to have a family of
eight! For an additional fifty cents apiece, they’ve gotten five more
children! Cheap at that.
On to the next. And the next. Time and again on fair and carnival
lots, I have seen persons make the rounds of absolutely every palmist,
or “mitt joint,” pay from fifty cents to a dollar in each place,
everywhere be told a “fortune” that was different in every detail, and
go home perfectly satisfied! And because of that, I once asked one of
the biggest carnival men in the country the reason.
“Plain, everyday curiosity,” came his answer. “The average person
is more curious than cats. If curiosity killed human beings, as it
is supposed to dispose of felines, we’d all be dead. Curiosity made
Franklin fly his kite, you know. Curiosity made Newton find out why
the apple hit him on the head. Curiosity sent Columbus across the
ocean,—and when you sit down and figure it out, curiosity is really
the thing that keeps us going. When we’re kids, we bust open the watch
to see what’s inside. When we’re grown up, we listen to some bird with
adenoids tell how the wild man was captured by seventeen burly sailors
on the Isle of Madagascar, and then pay our money to go in and see if
he’s really as vicious as the spieler says he is. And when we get a
strong suspicion that the wild man is only a South Carolina negro with
a wig and a false set of tusks and a bum leopard rug wrapped around
him, we don’t get mad about it. We’ve found out what we’ve started
to find out, haven’t we? Yep, I guess that answers the question.
Curiosity.”
“For instance, I’ve seen a chump stand at a ‘set’ or crooked ‘slum
spindle’ at a county fair, where every other prize is a watch and
every other one a little red celluloid rose, and turn the thing three
hundred and fifty times at ten cents a copy and win nothing but a red
rose every time. Three hundred and fifty little red celluloid roses for
thirty-five dollars. Curiosity. He wants to see if he really can win
one of those watches. When he finds out he can’t, he doesn’t get sore,
he’s satisfied!”
“And if you don’t believe that the human race is eaten up with
curiosity, just take a slant at those two Oregon John shows. Got in a
jam with one of the fellows over his contract and thought he was going
to cancel. So we booked another. Then the other fellow came on. Both
of ’em set up their shows on the lot, advertising the original Oregon
John, and it looked kind of bad for awhile until they opened up. After
that, we tied ’em both up for the whole season!”
I followed his direction and observed two “pit shows.” There I saw,
beyond the black mass of “lookers” who were surrounding the ballyhoo
stands, two banners, almost identical, displaying the hold-up of a
train by a lone bandit and the proclamation that within the pit was the
one and only and original Oregon John, the bandit.
The “bandit” incidentally, in this sort of an exhibition, consists of
the half-mummified cadaver of some unfortunate that has kicked around
an undertaking shop for two or three years unclaimed by any one who
will pay the funeral expenses. Then along comes a showman, who buys
the body and takes it out on the road, exhibiting it as the remains
of Oregon John, or California Pete, or Mexican Querto, or whomever he
desires. The poor cadaver cannot talk back. The bullet holes produced
artificially, are shown to prove just how he died at the hands of a
posse. The lecture details a list of crime that would have made Oregon
John or California Pete or whoever he happens to be a first-page
feature in every paper in the country for months. But that never is
considered. The crowd looks, gets a good, morbid sort of thrill, a few
shivers and a couple of shocks and calls it a wonderful amusement. In
real life, the poor mummy may have been a Sunday-school superintendent.
In death he is the worst of the worst, and the more horrible his
make-believe past, the more anxious the crowd is to take a look at him.
In fact, the “push” in front of the two shows which the carnival owner
indicated was tremendous. The showman smiled:
“First they go into one show and look at the only and original Oregon
John and listen to the lecturer announce the fact that his rival across
the way is a faker, a crook and seven different kinds of a liar. Then
they go out—and hurry to the show across the way, just to see what the
fake looks like. There they hear the same thing,—that the other man is
a faker. And I’ve seen ’em go back to the first show a second time,
just to take another look so they can make up their minds about the
thing. After which, they go home, and ‘a fine time was had by all.’”
So, after all, perhaps the carnival man was right. It’s curiosity which
lures forth the dime, where solid business couldn’t even drag it out!
Curiosity first, and then the desire to see some one else become a
bunkee also. For in this latter phase lies a gold mine.
It started, as a great many other things started, in the days of P. T.
Barnum. It has continued, with very little variation, ever since. I
know one man who makes a living by exhibiting, year in and year out, a
flock of “petrified bats.” Of course, it is a “pit show,” you go up the
stairs and look down a sort of well-like arrangement where you behold a
dozen or so ordinary bricks, or “brick-bats.”
Whereupon you’re mad as Hades for a moment, sheepish for five minutes
more, then determined, until you have hurried out, found a friend
and steered him toward the most wonderful show that he ever saw,—the
“Petrified Bat.” He pays his money, and goes in, and your laugh comes
when he finds he’s been fooled. So out _he_ goes to find some one
else,—and the showman makes a living!
Incidentally, it may be surprising to know that the very tricks of this
sort, originated by Barnum and others of his type, still are running
to-day, and making money. Fifty years is a long time. In fact, when
you come to consider, the world has absolutely turned over in that
time. The airplane has come, electricity been developed, this, that and
the other thing done, and you’d think—
But just the same, last summer, I was wandering over the lot of a small
circus in a Kansas town. Aside from the side-show tent was a smaller
“black top,” or tent made of black canvas, in front of which stood a
talker, speaking very confidentially to the crowd before him.
“Now, I hope the ladies won’t take any offense,” he was announcing,
“but what we have to show in there is for men only. It wouldn’t be
wise for me to describe it out here; I know you boys don’t want me to
go into details. Anyway, a word to the wise is sufficient. So, I’m not
going to talk you to death, and I’m going to make my apologies to the
ladies. For men only—for men only—and only twenty-five cents!”
Near me stood a man and a woman. The man hesitated, but the woman
nudged him.
“Go on in,” she tempted, “and see what it is. Then you can tell me.”
Curiosity! In went Husband. Out he came, a sickly green.
“Nothing but a darned pair of suspenders!” he snorted. The woman
giggled.
“That’s one on you! That’s one on you, all right. Wait ’til I tell—”
“Sh-h-h-h-h!” He had caught her arm. “Don’t tell anybody! Wait until I
get hold of Tom and steer him in there! Won’t he be mad?”
Thus the endless chain was started, and several hundred persons paid
their money in tribute to a trick which has existed unchanged since
long before the Civil War! The “For Men Only” show, with variations,
has been running now for three generations,—and there are few times
that it fails.
So it goes. Away back in the last century, Barnum exhibited the “horse
with his tail where his head should be.” There was nothing untruthful
in it. The exhibit was a horse standing in a stall with his tail
instead of his head, at the feed box. They came, they saw, then they
went out and got others to come and see. That was in the 40’s. I have
seen the very same trick doing a “turn-away” business within the last
four months!
In fact, the list is endless. I can make an excellent pair of Siamese
Twins in fifteen minutes, by the application of a double belt of
rubber, made to resemble human flesh, which passes around both bodies
and joins by a heavy strip, which connects the two torsos. After that,
all that is necessary is to teach the “twins” to walk together, so that
when one is going forward, the other is traveling backward, and to
arrange the “patter”, which always begins:
“And now, my dear friends, if you will gather a bit closer, I will
endeavor to explain to you the strange history of these queer people.
Born on the Island of Hootchi, fifty-eight miles west of the Isle of
Pataloochin, they were discovered by the king of the tribe and raised
to a position which almost equaled royalty, where they were found by a
roving sea captain, etc.—”
Always get the sea captain in. Why? Because of the romance of it! He
travels in strange places. He sees strange things. Isn’t it natural
therefore that he would be the one to bring these weird people to this
country,—for your edification?
An elastic-skinned man may be manufactured by the same method, and
those “strange people” are useful as well as ornamental. More than
one side-show exhibit helps to “put up” and “tear down” the show, a
perfectly healthy, normal human being, when he isn’t at his job of
being one of “these queer people.”
For a two-headed man, all you have to do is find a person with a large
wen on his forehead. There are twenty concerns that will make a mask
and wig which will fit that face, in exact miniature of the man’s own
physiognomy. And if you don’t care about expense, that face can be made
to open and close its eyes, move its ears, move its mouth and even
smoke a cigarette, simply through the application of “pull cords” such
as are used for ventriloquist’s figures, and by a suction tube attached
to a bulb for the smoking stunt.
In fact, for the purpose of the showman—and for the purpose of the
spectator—a fake is always better than the real thing. It’s more along
the lines of what the public wants. The statement sounds queer, but
just the same—
Perhaps you’ve heard of “Jo-Jo, the Dog-Faced Boy?” There was a real
Jo-Jo, it is true, who lived in Russia and through some freak of
misfortune possessed a face which was remarkably like that of a dog.
But that isn’t the Jo-Jo which lives in your memory. The one of whom
you think was a fake!
He was nothing more than an English variety performer who was an
adept at imitating the barking of dogs. An American showman procured
somewhere a picture of the original Jo-Jo and had an expensive wig
made to imitate him. Then the Englishman was dressed in the garb
of a Russian peasant, and for months, in Boston, in New York, and
in practically every other city of the East, thousands of persons
struggled to see this “strange man with the face of a dog.”
Over in Russia, the original Jo-Jo heard of his rival and hastened for
America, hoping for a fortune. Wasn’t he the real thing? He was, but
that mattered little. Jo-Jo, the real Dog-Faced Boy, couldn’t bark like
the faker could. Hence he drew a fair salary at a museum, but that was
about all!
The list of fakery can go on, through nearly every historical freak
that lives in memory. The Dahomey Giant, an account of which you
can find in nearly every encyclopedia, was a bit of bunk,—merely a
seven-foot negro. The “missing link” was only a hairy child. And even
the first “Wild Man” was a fake, just as every wild man from Borneo,
Siam, Yonkers or the Bronx, since then, has been a fake. But you’ve
seen the wild man, haven’t you? So have I!
What’s more, even the genuine is often a fake. A few seasons ago, the
only real, living adult gorilla ever shown in captivity toured America,
and made, oh, many dollars for his owner. He was genuine. There was
no doubt about it. On every side were documents to show that he was
genuine; as many as ten famous blood specialists and microscopists said
that he was genuine. In fact, they almost went so far as to call him
the missing link and to swear that at last Darwin’s theory had been
proven. Yet he was only an overgrown black-faced chimpanzee!
How simple it had been. We simply selected ten men whom we knew were
not hunters of gorillas, or showmen, or students of animal life. We
went to them with the chimpanzee, and we were very frank, and very,
very earnest.
“Gentlemen,” we announced, “we think we’ve got a gorilla here, but
we’re not sure. Nobody knows very much about gorillas, because they’re
so rare. We’ve been wondering whether you could make a blood test and
tell us by the corpuscles of this animal whether or not it really is a
gorilla?”
They believed they could. They made the tests. Then they gave their
announcement. This was a gorilla! A real, live, adult gorilla! How did
they know? Simply because a gorilla is an anthropoidal ape, belonging
to the same species, in a way, as a human being. The blood corpuscles
nearly correspond. The corpuscles of this beast conformed more closely
to those of a human being than anything else they ever had examined.
Therefore, it must be a gorilla!
So, with the documentary evidence signed by ten famous men, with
micro-photographic pictures of the blood corpuscles to prove it, out
we went with our gorilla! And in the people came to see it; didn’t
ten famous doctors who should know, proclaim it a gorilla? The fact
that they had no real gorilla blood by which to make comparisons had
something to do with their statements, of course. But we didn’t mention
that.
Again, we received the news that a baby elephant was about to be born
to one of the herd. At the head of our show was a little, Napoleonic
appearing man who could have given P. T. Barnum a night-school
education in shrewdness, and still left him a babe in arms. He received
the news. Then he reached for the telephone.
Would a certain physician, who then was the mayor of the city, like
to attend an unusual thing like the birth of a baby elephant? The
physician would. And would fifteen other doctors—as he called them, one
by one—be interested? Certainly. Why? Curiosity! They had brought many
a human baby into the world, but never had they seen a baby elephant
born. So out they went. And they stood in a line beside the baby
elephant, after it had been introduced to this world, and allowed their
photographs to be taken. Then—
Out to a waiting, gasping, bunk-loving amusement world went a baby
elephant which had required the attendance of sixteen of the biggest
doctors of the West to start it in life. One baby elephant—sixteen
doctors. There were the pictures. There were the signatures:
This is to certify that I, this day, did attend at the birth of
Cutie, the baby elephant, that she was born at 8:22 A. M., and that
there is every indication that she will live to be a healthy adult
pachyderm.
Signed, this day and date.
With this evidence before them, through the admission gates there
crowded some fifty thousand persons before Cutie decided to curl up her
toes and die,—fifty thousand persons eager and riotous to see a baby so
wonderful that sixteen famous doctors were required to bring her into
the world. Nor did they stop to consider that Cutie’s mother was born
without a doctor within a thousand miles of her, and that, since the
world began, a million elephants more or less have entered into this
life without even knowing what a doctor looked like!
Once, on a circus with which I was connected, our feature act of the
side show was Prince Biji, the Wild Man from Tasmania. Prince Biji
was born and lived on Clark Street in Chicago, where his tailor-made
clothing was the envy of every other negro in the neighborhood. On the
circus, Prince Biji dressed himself in an imitation plush leopard skin,
carried a spear and shield, wore tusks, and hung about his throat a
necklace of human teeth, souvenirs of his victims, killed in battle in
the wilds of Tasmania. In fact, Prince Biji was an excellent feature.
He looked wild. He acted wild. Within the side show, the lecturer would
speak as follows:
“Now, ladies and gentlemen, we come to one of the greatest
educational features of this vast collection of strange and unusual
creatures,—Prince Biji, the wild man from Tasmania. Now, we make no
claims for Prince Biji, such that he eats raw meat or devours serpents
alive, or anything foolish like that. Prince Biji is merely here as
an example of his warlike tribe, being obtained under bond from the
government of Tasmania as an exhibit of the fiendish races which
inhabit its strange and fearsome jungles. Now, Prince Biji can neither
speak nor understand a word of English. Can you, Biji?”
Whereupon Biji would shake his head violently. He could not understand
a single word of English. Perhaps it was mind reading which made him
shake his head in answer to a question in English. The lecturer went on.
“You see, he cannot understand or speak a word of English. Now,
Prince Biji, for your edification, will do his native sword dance, as
performed in the jungles of Tasmania. Do your sword dance, Biji.”
Whereupon, Biji, not understanding a word of English, would do his
sword dance and sing one of the songs of his wild and native land, a
conglomeration of guttural sounds composed of whatever popped into his
head. Then the lecturer would go on with his speech.
But about this time, Biji would look down into the audience. And every
few days, he would see there some negro whom he either had met in his
show days or around Chicago. About the time the lecturer would be
repeating the fact that poor Biji had never been able to master the
English tongue, Biji would beam down at his friend, and exclaim:
“Wha’, hello, Big Sly! Where yo’ been at all dis yere time?”
Big Sly would greet him effusively. The lecturer would never even
glance in Biji’s direction. On he would go with his talk, while Prince
Biji and Big Sly carried on an animated conversation, asked about each
other’s relatives and made arrangements to meet after the show. Then
Biji would straighten again, while the lecturer would draw the crowd
confidentially nearer him, and announce:
“Now Prince Biji has brought with him to this country a limited
number of a small, queer-shaped pod which grows in his native jungles
of Tasmania, and which, upon being blessed by the savage priests of
his strange and warlike tribe, are supposed to prevent forever evil
spirits, illness and bad luck. As I have mentioned, he has only a
limited amount of these, and as a special favor this afternoon, he has
decided to allow a small number to be sold and will consent to pass
these little lucky beans out among you, at the small and reasonable
price of twenty-five cents, a quarter of a dollar.”
Whereupon, Prince Biji, who could not speak a single word of English,
would reach immediately for an old cigar box, half-filled with hard,
black affairs, such as we knew in kidhood days as “yonkypin nuts.” And
the crowd would step up and buy until the supply was gone!
In which case, even curiosity cannot be saddled with the weight of the
explanation. Nor can psychology, nor showmanship, nor anything else,
save one fact:
We just like to be bunked!