The Show Strikes Virginia and the Educated Ourang Outang Has the
Whooping Cough--The Bad Boy Plays the Part of a Monkey, but They
Forget to Pin on a Tail.
Well, I have broke the show all to pieces, just by not being able to
stand grief. Everything is all balled up, the managers are sore at me,
and afraid of being sent to jail, and pa thinks I ought to be mauled.
It was this way: When we left Washington we cut loose from every home
tie, and plunged into Virginia, and the trouble began at once. We met a
lawyer on the train, on the way to Richmond, and fed him in our dining
car, and got him acquainted with all the performers and freaks, and he
told us that we would have to be careful in Virginia, 'cause all the
white people were first families and aristocratic, and if any man about
our show should fail to be polite to the white people they would be shot
or lynched, but if we wanted to shoot niggers the game laws were not
very strict about it, 'cause the open season on niggers run the year
around, but you couldn't shoot white people only two months in the year.
He said another thing that scared pa and the managers. He said that if a
traveling show did not perform all it advertised the owners were liable
to go to state prison for 20 years, and that each town had men on the
lookout to see that shows didn't advertise what they didn't carry out.
Pa and the managers held a consultation, and couldn't find that we
advertised anything that we didn't have, except the ourang outang that
we took on at New York, which eats and dresses like a man, 'cause that
animal got whooping cough in Delaware and had to be sent to a hospital,
but we heard he was well again and would join the show in a week. Pa
asked the Richmond lawyer how it would be if one of the animals that was
advertised was sick and couldn't perform, and he told pa the people
would mob the show if anything was left out.
When we got to Richmond the whole population, principally niggers, was
at the lot when we put up the tents, and everybody wanted to catch a
sight of Dennis, the ourang outang, and the posters all over town that
pictured Dennis smoking cigarettes with a dress suit on, and eating with
a knife and fork and a napkin tucked under his chin, were surrounded by
crowds. It was plain that all the people cared for was to see the monk.
The managers held a council of war and decided the show would be ruined
if we didn't make a bluff at having an ourang outang, so it was decided
that I was to be dressed up in Dennis' clothes, and put on a monkey
mask, and go through his stunt at the afternoon performance.
Gee, but I hated to do it, but pa said the fate of the show depended on
it and if I didn't take the part he would have to do it himself, and I
knew pa wasn't the build of man to play the monkey, and so I said I
would do it, but I will never do it again for any show. The wardrobe
woman fixed my up like Dennis, and I had seen him go through his stunt
so often I thought I could imitate him, and of course there was no
talking to do, but just to grunt once in awhile, the way Dennis did, and
have an animal look.
Well, sir, the keeper who trained the ourang outang took me in hand, and
in an hour I was perfect, I had rubber feet and wore black gloves, and
had a tail fastened with a safety pin, that would deceive the oldest
showman in the business. When the crowd was the biggest, in the middle
ring, the keeper led me out of the dressing room with a chain. The
announcement was made by the barker that Dennis, the educated ourang
outang, that had performed before crowned heads in Europe and sapheads
in Newport, the only man-monkey in the known world, would now entertain
the most select audience that had ever been under the tent. Then I was
dragged into the ring and put on the platform.
[Illustration: The Keeper Who Trained the Ourang outang Took Me in
Hand.]
They didn't put on my dress clothes at first, but had a little screen on
the platform for me to go behind to dress, and I appeared first in the
natural state of the ourang outang, with a suit of buffalo robe stuff
that looked exactly like a big monkey. I bowed and the audience cheered,
and I stood on my hands and scratched at an imaginary flea, and pa, who
was leaning against the platform, whispered to me that I was making the
hit of the season.
Then the attendants set the table and the keeper took me behind the
screen and dressed me, and the old fool forgot to put on my tail. He led
me out and I sat up to the table, hitched up my cuffs, put a napkin
under my chin, took a knife and fork and began to eat, just like a human
being. The audience cheered, and the circus people crowded around and
said I was just as good as Dennis himself. I went through the whole of
Dennis' performance and never skipped a note, until a smart white man
yelled: "Where is the tail of your ourang outang?" and the crowd began
to be suspicious, and more than a thousand yelled. "There is no tail on
your monkey."
That rattled the trainer and he remembered that he had forgotten to pin
the tail on me, so while I was using the finger bowl he went to the
screen and got the tail and came out and was pinning it on to my dress
pants, when the audience began to yell: "Fraud! Fraud! Kill the monk!"
and a lot of stuff.
Then pa got on a barrel the elephants had been performing on and got the
attention of the audience and told them not to be unreasonable. He said
the management had found by experience that after the ourang outang had
been trained to eat like a man and wear men's clothes, that his tail was
in the way, so at a great expense the management had caused Dennis' tail
to be amputated at a New York hospital, and while we always carry the
tail along, it was only used when a critical audience demanded it, but
if this refined audience so desired the tail would be attached to the
intelligent animal.
The crowd yelled: "Pin on the tail; the tail goes with the hide," and
the trainer began to pin it on. Say, I could have killed that trainer.
He run that safety pin about an inch into my spine, and I jumped into
the air about four feet, and I was going to use a cuss word that I
learned in Philadelphia, but I had presence of mind enough to grunt just
as Dennis used to, and chatter like a monkey, and the day was saved. The
tail was on and I turned my back to show that it was on straight, like a
woman's hat, when pa said to hurry the performance to a conclusion,
because he could see that there was a spirit of unrest in the audience,
and he would not be surprised any moment to see Virginia secede and go
out of the union.
There was nothing more for me to do except to drink my cup of
after-dinner coffee, and smoke my cigarette, and quit, and I was patting
myself on the back at my success and squirming around in the chair,
'cause the pin in my tail hurt my back but I never said a word. The
attendant brought in the coffee and I took a couple of swallows, when I
realized that somebody had put cayenne pepper into it, and I was hot
under the collar, but though I was burning up inside, I never peeped,
but just choked and took a swallow of water and vowed to kill the person
that made the coffee.
I kept my temper till the trainer handed me the cigarette and a match,
and the first puff I realized that they had filled the cigarette with
snuff, and after blowing out the smoke I began to sneeze, and the
audience fairly went wild. I sneezed about eight times, and at every
sneeze the pin in my spine hurt like thunder, but I never lost my
temper, till about the seventh sneeze, when my monkey mask flew off, and
then a boy about my size, right in front of me, yelled: "It ain't a
monkey at all, it is a little nigger," and he threw a ripe persimmon and
hit me right in the eye. I said right out in plain English: "You're a
liar and I can knock the stuffing out of you."
[Illustration: He Hit Me Right in the Eye.]
I pulled off my dress coat and started for him, but pa grabbed me on one
side and the monkey trainer on the other, and they tried to get me to
return to the monkey character, and chatter, and pa put my monkey mask
on me, but I struck right there, and pulled it off, and told him and the
managers that I would not play monkey any more with a tail pinned to my
spine, my stomach full of cayenne pepper and my nostrils full of Scotch
snuff, and my face all puckered up with persimmons.
The crowd yelled: "Fraud! Fraud! Kill the bald-headed old man who is the
father of the monkey." and they were making a rush to clean out the show
when the dressing-room door opened to let the hippodrome chariot racers
out, and the way the chariots scattered the crowd was a caution.
That saved us from serious trouble, for the chariots run over a lot of
negroes, which pleased the audience, and they let us off without killing
us. They got me back to the dressing-room and had to take a pair of
pinchers to get that safety pin out of my spine, and on the way to the
dressing-room some one walked on my monkey tail and pulled it off, and
that was a dead loss. Pa sat by me and fanned me, 'cause I was faint,
and then he said: "My boy, you played your part well, until the
persimmon hit you, and then you forgot that you were an actor, and
became yourself, and I don't blame you for wanting to punch that boy who
called you a little nigger, and said I was your pa. After this chariot
race is over we will go around in front of the seats, and find the boy,
and you can do him up. Your monkey business was the feature of the show
to-day."
We went out and found a boy that looked like the one that sassed me, but
he must have been his big brother, 'cause when I went up to him and
swatted him on the nose, he gave me a black eye, and I am a sight.
That evening, at the performance, we cut out the educated ourang outang,
and the lawyer we met on the cars came to the show, and said we would
all be arrested for not performing all we advertised, but he could
settle it for a hundred dollars, and pa paid him the money, and he went
out and got a jag and came in the show and was going to make trouble,
when pa took him to the cage where the 40-foot boa constrictor was
uncoiling itself, and the Virginian got one look at the snake and went
through the side of the tent yelling: "I've got 'em again. Catch me,
somebody."
We got out of town before morning, and nobody was arrested, except the
negroes that got run over in the chariot race.