The Circus Has a Yellow Fever Scare--The Bad Boy and His Dad Dress
Up as Hottentots--Pa Takes a Mustard Bath and Attends a Revival
Meeting.
Well, we have had a row for your life, and all the excitement anybody
can stand. We got into Indiana and have had a yellow fever scare, a
quarantine that lasted one night, so nobody could sleep on our train, a
riot at Evansville 'cause we took on a couple of female trapeze women
that came from Honduras, via New Orleans, and a revival of religion, all
in one bunch, and pa is beginning to get haggard, like a hag.
The female trapeze performers, who had been expected ever since we
started on the road, had been quarantined at New Orleans, where the
yellow fever is raging, and finally got through the quarantine guard
somewhere in Mississippi, and got to us Saturday afternoon, and some
official telegraphed to the mayor that two yellow fever refugees had
struck his town to join the circus, and he ordered the chief of police
to hunt them out, and put them in a pest house. The Honduras females
were yellow as saffron, but it was caused by the climate of Honduras,
but the whole show was scared to death for fear we would all have yellow
fever, and the management detailed pa and I to hide the yellow girls
from the police.
Pa fixed up one of the cages, with the girls blacked up as Hottentots
and pa and I blacked up as an African king and prince of the blood, and
we did stunts in the cage at afternoon and evening performances, and the
crowd could not keep away from our cage, until pa got hot and unbuttoned
his shirt and, before we knew it, everybody saw pa's white skin below
where his face and neck were blacked, and while we were talking
gibberish to each other a country jake got mad and he led a crowd to
open the cage and make us remove our shirts to prove that we were
Hottentots.
When they found we were white people blacked up they wanted their money
back and were going to tip over the cage, when pa saved the day by
making a speech, at the evening performance, to the effect that we were
all yellow fever refugees from New Orleans and the mob lit out on the
run for the main tent, where they announced that there were four cases
of fever in the menagerie tent, and that settled it.
The mayor and police closed the show on account of yellow fever, and we
couldn't get out of the tent. Pa had been quite close to the yellow
girls and when he found out that yellow fever was a disease that catches
you when not looking, and in 15 minutes you look like a corpse, and in
four hours you are liable to be a sure enough corpse, he shook the
yellow girls, and asked an old sailor what a man ought to do who has
been exposed to yellow fever, and the old sailor, who has had yellow
fever lots of times, told pa to strip off his clothes and take a bath of
prepared mustard, and rub it in thoroughly, and then wipe it off, and
take a vinegar rub, and after that sprinkle a little red pepper on
himself, put on different clothes and drink about a gallon of red
lemonade and he could defy yellow fever.
Pa is an easy mark and he believed the old sailor, who is tattooed and
makes a show of himself with the freaks, and pa took a change of clothes
and a bottle of mustard and a cruet of vinegar and a bottle of red
pepper and went into a dressing room and got behind a wagon and began to
take the cure the sailor had prescribed. I don't know as it was right to
do it, but about the time pa had got to the red pepper course and was
sprinkling it on his skin pretty thick, and he was beginning to get
pretty hot, and was yelling a little, I told the chief of police, who
was looking around with the health officer for suspicious cases, that
there was a man acting sort of queer behind the wagon that had a piece
of canvas over the wheels. They both rushed in on pa and grabbed him.
Gee! but pa looked and smelled like a plate of pigs' feet and the doctor
said it was an unmistakable case of yellow fever, he could tell by the
smell, and then pa turned pale and yellow from fright, and they wrapped
him up in a piece of canvas and took him away in an emergency hospital
ambulance, and the whole show at once knew that we were in for a
quarantine.
[Illustration: The Doctor Said it was an Unmistakable Case of Yellow
Fever.]
They burned up the suit of clothes pa took off and the one he was going
to put on, and the ambulance drove away, while pa shook one fist at the
sailor and one at me, and his skin began to shrink and smart, and he
yelled, and the audience stampeded, and the show was in the dumps.
We had to stay over Sunday in Evansville, and the show people were so
scared the manager thought he better have religious services in the tent
Sunday, so they got a revivalist preacher to preach to them, a fellow
who used to preach to the cowboys out west. Sunday morning the tough
fellows in the show said they wouldn't do a thing to the preacher when
he came on to do his stunt. Their idea was to wait until he got well on
his sermon and then begin to interrupt him and ask questions, and
finally to get a blanket and toss him up a few times for luck, and then
chase him out and have the circus bulldog, that chews the clown's pants,
catch the minister's coat tail and just scare him plum to death.
The boys said it would be the biggest picnic that ever was--a regular
barbecue. The boss canvasman said he was opposed to mixing religion with
the circus business, because the fellows could get all the religion they
needed in the winter, when the show was laid up and he would see the
boys through in anything they proposed to do to the sky pilot that was
going to play his game in ring No. 1 at 10:30 the next day.
Well, after I heard the circus men talk about what they would do to the
preacher, I was afraid they would kill him, so when he and a helper
brought a little melodeon into the ring, facing the reserved seats, I
told him the boys were going to raise a rumpus and drive him out of the
tent with the bulldog hanging to his coat tails. He put his hand on his
pistol pocket and pulled a long, blue gun about half way out, and let it
drop back down beside his leg, and he winked at me and said he guessed
not, scarcely, as he had preached to crowds so tough that a circus gang
was a Sunday school in comparison.
Then I got on a front seat to watch the fun. About 800 of the circus
hands, performers, clowns and peanut butchers, came in, snickering, and
sat down on the reserved seats in front of the little pulpit, improvised
from the barrels the elephants stand on, and some of them laughed and
said: "Hello, Bill!" and "Ah, there!" and "Get on to his collar," and a
lot of other things.
The little husky preacher had a Salvation Army girl to play the
melodeon, and he didn't take any notice of the remarks the boys made,
except to set his jaws together and moisten his lips. Finally they were
all seated, and he got up to open the services, when a big canvasman, a
regular Smart Aleck, got up on a seat and said: "Pardner, how you going
to open this jack pot?"
The crowd laughed and the preacher pulled his long blue gun up out of
his pocket, and laid it on the barrel, and then picked it up and pointed
it at the big canvasman and said: "This game is going to be opened with
this hand, seven of a kind, all 45 caliber, dum-dum bullets, and unless
you sit down quick I will send a mess of bullets into your carcass right
where your heart ought to be. If you open your mouth again before I say
'amen!' real loud at the close of the services, I will shoot all your
front teeth out. Do you comprehend? If so, be seated."
The big fellow dropped on to the blue seat, as though he had been hit
with a piledriver, and the crowd was so tickled to have the bully's
bluff called, that they cheered the preacher. Then he said, "We will now
open this jack pot with singing and I shall keep one eye on the
gentleman who was last up, but who is now seated pretty low down."
You could have heard a pin drop.
The preacher wiped his face calmly, and said: "We will now sing and I
expect every man will sing, and to that end I will appoint Big Ike, who
asked me how I was going to open this jack pot, to come down in front of
the seats and lead in the singing, for I know by his voice, which I
heard in debate, that he is a crackerjack," and the preacher took hold
of the handle of the blue gun and Big Ike walked down through the rows
of seats, and as the melodeon began to squawk, Ike got down in front of
the audience, and some of the boys said: "Bully for you, Ike," and after
scratching his head a minute Ike turned and walked towards the preacher,
at the edge of the ring, and I thought there was going to be the worst
fight ever was, and as the preacher reached for the gun I crawled under
the seat, and peeked out between the legs of a fat man, but Ike walked
up to the minister and said, as the melodeon began to cough: "Boys, this
tune is on Ike." He started it and every man sang.
[Illustration: After Scratching His Head a Minute, Ike Turned and Walked
Toward the Preacher.]
When it was ended the boys clapped and stamped for an encore, and they
sang it through again, and the face of the preacher beamed with joy, and
I saw there was not going to be any fight and I crawled out from under
the seats.
Pa came in the tent just then, with a new suit of clothes on, having
been discharged from the hospital as cured of yellow fever, and I gave
him my seat, and he held me in his lap.
The preacher then preached a sermon that did them all good. He dwelt
upon the hard life of the showman, and gave them such good advice that
when it was all over and he said he wanted to shake hands with every man
in the bunch, Ike marshaled them all up to the ring and introduced them,
and no minister ever was more cordially congratulated, and they wanted
him to go along with the show, and preach every Sunday.
The preacher said he couldn't join the show, but he traveled around a
good deal and he would probably be in the same town with the show
several times during the summer and he would drop in on them
occasionally and keep them straight.
Pa was watching the crowd for the sailor who prescribed cayenne pepper
for yellow fever, and when he saw the sailor come up to the minister,
with tears in his eyes, and say: "Parson, I has been a bad man and
killed a man once, but he was a Portuguese sailor, and he had the drop
on me, the same as you did on Big Ike at the opening of these
proceedings, and I had to kill him. And I begs the pardon of this old
gentleman for lying to him." And then pa shook hands with the sailor and
the parson, and the parson put his blue gun down his trousers leg, and
said: "By the way, the bulldog you were going to let take a lunch off
me, is he all right?"
Then the parson and the girl went away, and the boys carried out the
melodeon, and the quarantine was declared off. After dinner the boys
took down the tents and put them on the train that Sunday afternoon,
singing decent songs as they pulled up the stakes and rolled up the
canvas, and on the train, late in the night, we could hear "Old Hundred"
being sung as the cars ran through the pennyrial district of Indiana.