Only the other day, the man that in all this country knows better than anybody else how a circus should be advertised, said (with some sadness, I do believe) that it didn't pay any longer to put up showbills; the money was better invested in newspaper advertising.
“It doesn't pay.” Ah, me! How the commercial spirit of the age plays whaley with the romance of existence! You shall not look long upon the showbill now that there is no money to be had from it. “Youth's sweet-scented manuscript” is about to close, but ere it does, let us turn back a little to the pages illuminated by the glowing colors of the circus poster.
Saturday afternoon when we went by the enginehouse, its brick wall fluttered with the rags and tatters of “Esther, the Beautiful Queen,” and the lecture on “The Republic: Will it Endure?” (Gee! But that was exciting!) Sunday morning, after Sunday-school, there was a sudden quickening among the boys. We stopped nibbling on the edges of the lesson leaf and followed the crowd in scuttling haste. Miraculously, over-night, the shabby wall had blossomed into thralling splendor. What was Daniel in the Lions' Den, compared with Herr Alexander in the same? Not, as the prophet is pictured, in the farthest corner from the lions, and manifestly saying to himself: “If I was only out of this!” But with his head right smack dab in the lion's mouth. Right in it. Yes, sir.
“S' Posin'!” we gasped, all goggle-eyed, “jist s'posin' that there lion was to shut his mouth! Ga-ash!”
The Golden Text? It faded before the lemon-and-scarlet glories of the Golden Chariot. Drawn by sixteen dappled steeds, each with his neck arching like a fish-hook and reined with fancy scalloped reins, it occupied the center of the foreground. The band rode in it, far more fortunate than our local band whose best was, Charley Wells's depot 'bus. And nobler than all his fellows was the bass-drummer. He had a canopy over him, a carved and golden canopy, on whose top revolved a clown's head with its tongue stuck out. On each quarter of this rococo shallop a golden circus-girl in short skirts gaily skipped rope with a nubia or fascinator, or whatever it is the women call the thing they wrap around their heads in cold weather when they hang out the clothes. There were big pieces of looking-glass let into the sides of the band-wagon, and every decorator knows that when you put looking-glass on a thing it is impossible to fix it so that it will be any finer.
Winding back and forth across the picture was the long train of tableau-cars and animal cages, diminishing with distance until away, 'way up in the upper left-hand corner the hindmost van was all immersed in the blue-and-yellow haze just this side of out-of-sight. That with our own eyes we should behold the glories here set forth we knew right well. Cruel Fortune might cheat us of the raptures to be had inside the tents, but the street-parade was ours, for it was free.
It seems to me that we did not linger so long before these pictures, nor before those of the rare and costly animals, which, if we but knew it, were the main reason why we were permitted to go (if we did get to go). To look at these animals is improving to the mind, and since we could not go alone, an older person had to accompany us, and... and... I trust I make myself clear. But we didn't want to improve our minds if it was a possible thing to avoid it. The pictures of these animals were in the joggerfy book anyhow, though not in colors, unless we had a box of paints. There can be no doubt that the show-bill pictures of the menageries were in colors. I seem to recollect that Mr. Galbraith, who kept the dry-goods store across the street from the engine-house, was very much exercised in his mind about the way one of these pictures was printed. It was the counterfeit presentment of the Hip-po-pot-a-mus, or Behemoth of Holy Writ. His objection to the hip—you know was not because its open countenance was so fearsome, but because it was so red. Six feet by two of flaming crimson across the street in the afternoon sun made it necessary for him to take the goods to the back window of the store to show to customers. He didn't like it a bit.
No. Neither before the large and expensive pictures of the street-parade, nor the large and expensive wild beasts did we linger. The swarm was thickest, sand the jabbering loudest, the “O-o-oh's,” the “M! Looky's” the “Geeminently's” shrillest, in front of where the deeds of high emprise were set forth. Men with their fists clenched on their breasts, and their neatly slippered toes touching the backs of their heads, crashed through paper-covered hoops beneath which horses madly coursed; they flew through the air with the greatest of ease, the daring young men on the flying; trapeze, or they posed in living pyramids.
And as the sons of men assembled themselves together, Satan came also, the spirit I, that evermore denies.
“A-a-ah!” sneers his embodiment in one whose crackling voice cannot make up its mind whether to be bass or treble, “A-a-ah, to the show they down't do hay-uf what they is in the pitchers.”
A chilling silence follows. A cold uneasiness strikes into all the listeners. We are all made wretched by destructive criticism. Let us alone in our ideals. Let us alone, can't you?
“Now... now,” pursues the crackle-voiced Mephisto, pointing to where Japanese jugglers defy the law of gravitation and other experiences of daily life, “now, they cain't walk up no ladder made out o' reel sharp swords.”
“They can so walk up it,” stoutly declares one boy. Hurrah! A champion to the rescue! The others edge closer to him. They like him.
“Nah, they cain't. How kin they? They'd cut their feet all to pieces.”
“They kin so. I seen 'em do it. The time I went with Uncle George I seen a man, a Japanee.... Yes, sharp. Cut paper with 'em.... A-a-ah, I did so. I guess I know what I seen an' what I didn't.”
The little boys breathe easier, but fearing another onslaught, make all haste to call attention to the most fascinating one of all, the picture of a little boy standing up on top of his daddy's head. And, as if that weren't enough, his daddy is standing up on a horse and the horse is going round the ring lickety-split. And, as if these circumstances weren't sufficiently trying, that little show-boy is standing on only one foot. The other is stuck up in the air like five minutes to six, and he has hold of his toe with his hand. I'll bet you can't do that just as you are on the ground, let alone on your daddy's head, and him on a horse that's going like sixty. Now you just try it once. Just try it.... Aa-ah! Told you you couldn't.
Now, how the show-actors can do that looks very wonderful to you. It really is very simple. I'll tell you about it. All show-actors are born double-jointed. You have only two hip-joints. They have four. And it's the same all over with them. Where you have only one joint, they have two. So, you see, the wonder isn't how they can bend themselves every which way, but how they can keep from doubling up like a foot-rule.
And another thing. Every day they rub themselves all over with snake-oil. Snakes are all limber and supple, and it stands to reason that if you take and try out their oil, which is their express essence, and then rub that into your skin, it will make you supple and limber, too. I should think garter-snakes would do all right, if you could catch enough of them, but they 're so awfully scarce. Fishworms won't do. I tried 'em. There's no grease in 'em at all. They just dry up.
And I suppose you know the reason why they stay on the horse's back. They have rosin on their feet. Did you ever stand up on a horse's back? I did. It was out to grandpap's, on old Tib.... No, not very long. I didn't have any rosin on my feet. I was going to put some on, but my Uncle Jimmy said: “Hay! What you got there?” I told him. “Well,” he says, “you jist mosey right into the house and put that back in the fiddle-box where you got it. Go on, now. And if I catch you foolin' with my things again, I'll.... Well, I don't know what I will do to you.” So I put it back. Anyhow, I don't think rosin would have helped me stay on a second longer, because old Tib, with an intelligence you wouldn't have suspected in her, walked under the wagon-shed and calmly scraped me off her back.
And did you ever try to walk the tight-rope? You take the clothes-line and stretch it in the grape-arbor—better not make it too high at first—and then you take the clothes-prop for a balance-pole and go right ahead—er—er as far as you can. The real reason why you fall off so is that you don't have chalk on your shoes. Got to have lots of chalk. Then after you get used to the rope wabbling so all-fired fast, you can do it like a mice. And while I'm about it, I might as well tell you that if you ever expect to amount to a hill of beans as a trapeze performer you must have clear-starch with oil of cloves in it to rub on your hands. Finest thing in the world. My mother wouldn't let me have any. She said she couldn't have me messing around that way, I blame her as much as anybody that I am not now a competent performer on the trapeze.
I don't know that I had better go into details about the state of mind boys are in from the time the bills are first put up until after the circus has actually departed. I don't mean the boys that get to go to everything that comes along, and that have pennies to spend for candy, and all like that, whenever they ask for it. I mean the regular, proper, natural boys, that used to be “Back Home,” boys whose daddies tormented them with: “Well, we Il see—” that's so exasperating!—or, “I wish you wouldn't tease, when you know we can't spare the money just at present.” A perfectly foolish answer, that last. They had money to fritter away at the grocery, and the butcher-shop, and the dry-goods store, but when it came to a necessity of life, such as going to the circus, they let on they couldn't afford it. A likely story.
“Only jist this little bit of a once. Aw, now, please. Please, cain't I go? Aw now, I think you might. Aw now, woncha? Aw, paw. I ain't been to a reely show for ever so long. Aw, the Scripture pammerammer, that don't count. Aw, paw. Please cain't I go? Aw, please!” And so forth and so on, with much more of the same sort. No, I can't go into details, it's too terrible.
Even those of us whose daddies said plainly and positively: “Now, I can't let you go. No, Willie. That's the end of it. You can't go.” Even those, I say, hoped against hope. It simply could not be that what the human heart so ardently longed for should be denied by a loving father. This same conviction applies to other things, even when we are grown up. It is against nature and the constituted scheme of things that we cannot have what we want so badly. (And, in general, it may be said that we can have almost anything we want, if we only want it hard enough. That's the trouble with us. We don't want it hard enough.) We boys lay there in the shade and pulled the long stalks of grass and nibbled off the sweet, yellow ends, as we dramatized miracles that could happen just as well as not, if they only would, consarn 'em! For instance, you might be going along the street, not thinking of anything but how much you wanted to go to the circus, and how sorry you were because you hadn't the money, and your daddy wouldn't give you any; and first thing you 'd know, you 'd stub your toe on something, and you'd look down and there'd be a half a dollar that somebody had lost—Gee! If it would only be that way! But we knew it wouldn't, because only the other Sunday, Brother Longenecker had said: “The age of miracles is past.” So we had to give up all hopes. Oh, it's terrible. Just terrible!
But some of the boys lay there in the grass with their hands under their heads, looking up at the sky, and making little white spots come in and out on the corners of their jaws, they had their teeth set so hard, and were chewing so fiercely. You could almost hear their minds creak, scheming, scheming, scheming. I suppose there were ways for boys to make money in those times, but they always fizzled out when you came to try them, to say nothing of the way they broke into your day. Why, you had scarcely any time to play in. You 'd go 'round to some neighbor's house with a magazine, and you'd say: “Good afternoon, Mrs. Slaymaker. Do you want to subscribe for this?” Just the way you had studied out you would say. And she'd take it, and go sit down with it, and read it clear through while you played with the dog, and then when she got all through with it, and had read all the advertisements, she'd hand it back to you and say: No, she didn't believe she would. They had so many books and papers now that she didn't get a chance hardly to read in any of them, let alone taking any new ornes. Were you getting many new subscribers? Just commenced, eh? Well, she wished you all the luck in the world. How was your ma? That's good. Did she hear from your Uncle John's folks since they moved out to Kansas?
I have heard that there were boys who, under the dire necessity of going to the circus, got together enough rags, old iron, and bottles to make up the price, sold 'em, collected the money, and went. I don't believe it. I don't believe it. We all had, hidden under the back porch, our treasure-heap of rusty grates, cracked fire-pots, broken griddles and lid-lifters, tub-hoops and pokers, but I do not believe that any human boy ever collected fifty cents' worth. I want you to understand that fifty cents is a whole lot of money, particularly when it is laid out in scrap-iron. Only the tin-wagon takes rags, and they pay in tinware, and that's no good to a boy that wants to go to the circus. And as for bottles—well, sir, you wash out a whole, whole lot of bottles, a whole big lot of 'em, a wash-basket full, and tote 'em down to Mr. Case's drug—and book-store, as much as ever you and your brother can wag, and see what he gives you. It's simply scandalous. You have no idea of how mean and stingy a man can be until you try to sell him old bottles. And the cold-hearted way in which he will throw back ink-bottles that you worked so hard to clean, and the ones that have reading blown into the glass—Oh, it's enough to set you against business transactions all your life long. There's something about bargain and sale that's mean and censorious, finding this fault and finding that fault, and paying just as little as ever they can. It gets on one's nerves. It really does.
The boys that made the little white spots come on the corners of their jaws as they lay there in the grass, scheming, scheming, scheming, planned rags, and bottles, and scrap-iron, and more also. Sometimes it was a plan so much bigger that if they had kept it to themselves, like the darkey's cow, they would have “all swole up and died.”
“Sst! Come here once. Tell you sumpum. Now don't you go and blab it out, now will you? Hope to die? Well.... Now, no kiddin'. Cross your heart? Well.... Ah, you will, too. I know you. You go and tattle everything you hear.... Well.... Cheese it! Here comes somebody. Make out we're talkin' about sumpum else. Ah, he did, did he? What for, I wonder? (Say sumpum, can't ye?) Why 'nu' ye say sumpum when he was goin' by? Now he'll suspicion sumpum 's up, and nose around till he.... Aw, they ain't no use tellin' you anything.... Well. Put your head over so 's I can whisper. Sure I am.... Well, I could learn, couldn't I? Now don't you tell a living soul, will you? If anybody asts you, you tell 'em you don't know anything at all about it. Say, why 'n't you come along? I promised you the last time. That's jist your mother callin' you. Let on you don't hear her. Aw, stay. Aw, you don't either have to go. Say. Less you and me get up early, and go see the circus come in town, will you? I will, if you will. All right. Remember now. Don't you tell anybody what I told you. You know.”
If a fellow just only could run off with a circus! Wouldn't it be great? No more splitting kindling and carrying in coal; no more: “Hurry up, now, or you'll be late for school;” no more poking along in a humdrum existence, never going any place or seeing anything, but the glad, free, untrammeled life, the life of a circus-boy, standing up on top of somebody's head (you could pretend he was your daddy. Who'd ever know the difference?) and your leg stuck up like five minutes to six, and him standing on top of a horse—and the horse going around the ring, and the ring master cracking his whip—aw, say! How about it?
Maybe the show-people would take you even if you didn't have two joints to common folks' one, and hadn't had early advantages in the way of plenty of snakes to try the grease out of. And then... and then.... Travel all around, and be in a new town every day! And see things! The water-works, and Main Street, and the Soldiers' Monument, and the Second Presbyterian Church. All the sights there are to see in strange places. And then when the show came back to your own home-town next year, people would wonder whose was that slim and gracile figure in the green silk tights and spangled breech-clout that capered so nimbly on the bounding courser's back, that switched the natty switch and shrilly called out: “Hep! Hep!” They'd screw up their eyes to look hard, and they'd say: “Yes, sir. It is. It's him. It's Willie Bigelow. Well, of all things!” And they'd clap their hands, and be so proud of you. And they'd wonder how it was that they could have been so blind to your many merits when they had you with them. They'd feel sorry that they ever said you were a “regular little imp,” if ever there was one, and that you had the Old Boy in you as big as a horse. They'd feel ashamed of themselves, so they would. And they'd come and apologize to you for the way they had acted, and you'd say: “Oh, that's all right. Forgive and forget.” And they'd miss you at home, too. Your daddy would wish he hadn't whaled you the way he did, just for nothing at all. And your mother, too, she'd be sorry for the way she acted to you, tormenting the life and soul out of you, sending you on errands just when you got a man in the king row, and making you wash your feet in a bucket before you went to bed, instead of being satisfied to let you pump on them, as any reasonable mother would. She'll think about that when you're gone. It'll be lonesome then, with nobody to bang the doors, and upset the cream-pitcher on the clean table-cloth, and fall over backward in the rocking-chair and break a rocker off. Your daddy will sigh and say:
“I wonder where Willie is to-night. Poor boy, I sometimes fear I was too harsh with him.” And your mother will try to keep back her tears, but she can't, and first thing she knows she'll burst out crying, and... and... and old Maje will go around the house looking for you, and whining because he can't find his little playmate.... It will seem as if you were dead—dead to them, and.... Smf! Smf!
(Confound that orchestra leader anyhow! How many times have I got to tell him that this is the music-cue for “Where is My Wandering Boy To-night?”)
We were all going to get up early enough to see the show come in at the depot. Very few of us did it. Somehow we couldn't seem to wake up. Here and there a hardy spirit compasses the feat.
All the town is asleep when this boy slips out of his front-gate and snicks the latch behind him softly. It is very still, so still that though he is more than a mile away from the railroad he can hear Johnny Mara, the night yardmaster, bawl out: “Run them three empties over on Number Four track!” the short exhaust of the obedient pony-engine, and the succeeding crash of the cars as they bump against their fellows. It is very still, scarey still. The gas-lamp flaring and flickering among the green maples at the corner has a strange look to him. His footfalls on the sidewalk sound so loud he takes the soft middle of the dusty road. He hears some one pursuing him and his bosom contracts with fear, as he stands to see who it is. Although he hardly knows the boy bound on the same errand as his, he takes him to his heart, as a chosen friend. They are kin.
On the freight-house platform they find other boys. Some of them have waited up all night so as not to miss it. They are from across the tracks. They have all the fun, those fellows do. They can swear and chew tobacco, and play hookey from school and have a good time. They get to go barefoot before anybody else, and nobody tells them it will thin their blood to go in swimming so much. Yes, and they can fight, too. They'd sooner fight than eat. Our boys, conscious of inferiority, keep to themselves. The boys from across the tracks show off all the bad words they can think of. One of them has a mouth-harp which he plays upon, now and then opening his hands hollowed around the instrument. Patsy Gubbins dances to the music, which is a thing even more reckless and daredevil than swearing. Patsy's going with a “troupe” some day. Or else, he's going to get a job firing on an engine. He isn't right sure which he wants to do the most.
Now and then a brakeman goes by swinging his lantern. The boys would like to ask him what time it is, but for one thing they're too bashful. Being a brakeman is almost as good as going with a “troupe” or a circus. You get to go to places that way, too, Marysville, and Mechanicsburg, and Harrod's—that is, if you're on the local freight, and then you lay over in Cincinnati. Some ways it's better than firing, and some ways it isn't so good. And then there is another reason why they don't ask the brakeman what time it is. He'd say it was “forty-five” or maybe “fifty-three,” and never tell what hour.
“Say! Do you know it's cold? You wouldn't think it would be so cold in the summer-time.”
The maple-trees, from being formless blobs, insensibly begin to look like lace-work. Presently the heavens and the earth are bathed in liquid blue that casts a spell so potent on the soul of him that sees it that he yearns for something he knows not what, except that it is utterly beyond him, as far beyond him as what he means to be will be from what he shall attain to. One dreams of romance and renown, of all that should be and is not. And as he dreams the birds awaken. In the East there comes a greenish tinge. Far up the track, there is a sullen roar, and then the hoarse diapason of an engine whistle. The roar strengthens and strengthens. It is the circus train.
Under the witchcraft of the dreaming blue, each boy had a firm and stubborn purpose. Over and over again he rehearsed how he would go up to the man that runs the show, and say: “Please, mister, can I go with you?” And the man would say, “Yes.” (As easy as that.) But the purpose wavered as he saw the roustabouts come tumbling out, all frowsy and unwashed, rubbing the sleep out of their eyes, cross and savage. And the man whose word they jump to obey, he's kind of discouraging, it's all business with him. The fellows may plead with their eyes; he never sees them. If he does, he tells them where to get to out of that and how quick he wants it done, in language that makes the boldest efforts of the boys from across the tracks seem puny in comparison. The lads divide into two parties. One follows the buggy of the boss canvasman to Vandeman's lots where the stand is made. They will witness the spectacle of the raising of the tents, but they will also be near the man that runs the show, and if all goes well it may be he will like your looks and saunter up to you and say: “Well, bub, and how would you like to travel with us?” You don't know. Things not half so strange as that have happened. And if you were right there at the time....
The other party lingers awhile looking up wistfully at the unresponsive windows of the sleeping-cars, behind which are the happy circus-actors. Perhaps the show-boy that stands up on top of his daddy's head will look out. If he should raise the window and smile at you, and get to talking with you maybe he would introduce you to his pa, and tell him that you would like to go with the show, and his pa would be a nice sort of a man, and he'd say: “Why, yes. I guess we can fix that all right.” And there you'd be.
Or if it didn't come out like that, why, maybe the boy would be another “Little Arthur, the Boy Circus-rider,” like it told about in he Ladies' Repository. It seems there was a man, and one day he went by where there was a circus, and in a quiet secluded, vine-clad nook only a few steps from the main tent, he heard somebody sigh, oh, so sadly and so pitifully! Come to find out, it was Little Arthur, the Boy Circus-rider. He had large sensitive violet eyes, and a wealth of clustering ringlets, and he was very, very unhappy. So the man took from his pocket a Bible that he happened to have with him, and he read from it to Little Arthur, which cheered him up right away, because up to that moment he had only heard of the Bible. (Think of that!) And that night at the show, what do you s'pose? Little Arthur fell off the horse and hurt himself. And this man was at the show and he went back in the dressing-room, and held Little Arthur's hand. And the clown was crying, and the actors were crying, for they all loved Little Arthur in their rude, untutored way. And Little Arthur opened his large sensitive violet eyes, and saw the man, and said off the text that the man taught him that afternoon.
And then he died. It was a sad story, but it made you wish it had been you that happened to have a Bible in your pocket as you passed the secluded, vine-clad nook only a few paces from the main tent, and had heard Little Arthur sigh so pitifully. It was those sensitive eyes we looked for in the sleeping-car windows, and all in vain. I think I saw the wealth of clustering ringlets, or at least the makings of it. I am almost positive I saw curl-papers as the curtain was drawn aside a moment.
But whether a boy stands gazing at the sleepers, or runs over to the lots, there is something pathetic about it, something almost terrible. It is the death of an ideal. I can't conceive of a boy coming down to the depot to see the circus train come in another time. Hitherto, the show has been to him the ne plus ultra of romance. It comes in the night from 'way off yonder; it goes in the night to 'way off yonder. It is all splendor, all deeds of high emprise. It stands to reason then, that the closer you get to it, the closer you get to pure romance. And it isn't that way at all.
What gravels a boy the most of all is to have to do the same old thing over and over again, day after day, week in, week out. Once he has seen the circus come in, he cannot blind himself to the fact that everything is marked and numbered; that all is system, and that everything is done today exactly as it was done yesterday, and as it will be done tomorrow.
“What town is this?” he hears a man inquire of another.
“Blest if I know. What's the odds what town it is?”
Didn't know what town it was! Didn't care!
The keen morning air, or something, makes a fellow mighty unromantic, too. Perhaps it was the thin blue wood-smoke from the field-stoves, and the smell of the hot coffee and the victuals the waiters are carrying about, some to the tent where the bare tables are for the canvasmen, some to the table covered with a red and white table-cloth as befits performers. These have no rosy cheeks. Their lithe limbs are not richly decked with silken tights. Insensibly the upper lip curls. They're not so much. They're only folks. That's all, just folks.
But when ideals die, great truths are born. To such a boy at such a moment there comes the firm conviction which increasing years can only emphasize: Home is but a poor prosaic place, but Home—Ah, my brother, think on this—Home is where Breakfast is.
“Hay! Wait for me, you fellows! Hay! Hold on a minute. Well, ain't I a-comin' jis' 's fast's ever I kin? What's your rush?”
It is the exceptional boy has this experience. The normal one preserves the delicate bloom of romance, by never seeing the show until it makes its Grand Triumphal Entree in a Pageant of Unparalleled Magnificence far Surpassing the Pomp and Splendor of Oriental Potentates.
The hitching-posts are full of whinnering country horses, and people are in town you wouldn't think existed if you hadn't seen their pictures in Puck and Yudge, people from over by Muchinippi, and out Noodletoozy way, big, red-necked men with the long loping step that comes from walking on the plowed ground. Following them are lanky women with their front teeth gone, and their figures bowed by drudgery, dragging wide-eyed children whose uncouth finery betrays the “country jake,” even if the freckles and the sun-bleached hair could keep the secret. From the far-off fastnesses, where there are still log-cabins chinked with mud, they have ventured to see the show come into town, and when they have seen that, they will retire again beyond our ken. How every sense is numbed and stunned by the magnificence and splendor of the painted and gilded wagons as they rumble past, the driver rolling and pitching in his seat, as he handles the ribbons of eight horses all at once! The farmer's heart is filled with admiration of his craft, as much as the children's hearts are at the gaudy pictures.
The allegorical tableau-car solemnly waggles past, Europe, and Asia, and Africa, and Australia brilliant in grease-paint and gorgeous cheesecloth robes. And can you guess who the fat lady is up on the very tip-top of all, on the tip-top where the wobble is the worst? Our own Columbia! It must be fine to ride around that way all dressed up in a flag. But a sourer lot of faces you never saw in your life. No. I am wrong. For downright melancholy and despondency you must wait till the funny old clown comes along in his little bit of a buggy drawn by a little bit of a donkey.
“And, oh, looky! Here comes the elephants, just the same as in the joggerfy books. And see the men walking beside them. They come from the place the elephants do. See, they have on the clothes they wear in that country. Don't they look proud? Who wouldn't be proud to get to walk with an elephant? And if you ever do anything to an elephant to make him mad, he'll always remember it, and some day he'll get even with you. One time there was a man, and he gave an elephant a chew of tobacco, and—O-o-ooh! See that man in the cage with the lions! Don't it just make the cold chills run over you? I wouldn't be there for a million dollars, would you, ma?
“What they laughing at down the street? Ma, make Lizzie get down; she's right in my way. I don't want to see it pretty soon. I want to see it naow! Oh, ain't it funny? See the old clowns playing on horns! Ain't it too killing? Aw, look at them ponies. I woosht I had one. Johnny Pym has got a goat he can hitch up. What was that, pa? What was that went 'OoOOoohm!'”
“Whoa, Nell, whoa there! Steady, gal, steaday! Ho, there! Ho! Whoa—whoa-hup! Whad dy y' about? Fool horse. Whoa... whoa so, gal, soo-o. Lion, I guess, or a tagger, or sumpum or other.”
And talk about music. You thought the band was grand. You just wait. Don't you hear it down the street? It'll be along in a minute now.
There it is. That's the cally-ope. That's what the show bills call: “The Steam Car of the Muses.”... Mm-well, I don't know but it is just a leetle off the pitch, especially towards the end of a note, but you must remember that you can't haul a very big boiler on a wagon, and the whistles let out an awful lot of steam. It's pretty hard to keep the pressure even. But it's loud. That's the main thing. And the man that plays on it—no, not that fellow in the overalls with a wad of greasy waste in his hand. He 's only the engineer. I mean the artist, the man that plays on the keys. Well, he knows what the people want. He has his fingers on the public pulse. Does he give them a Bach fugue, or Guillmant's “Grand Choeur?” 'Deed, he doesn't. He goes right to the heart, with “Patrick's Day in the Morning,” and “The Carnival of Venice,” and “Home, Sweet Home,” and “Oh, Where, Oh Where has my Little Dog Gone?” He knows his business. A shade off the key, perhaps, but my! Ain't it grand? So loud and nice!
“Well, that's all of it.... Why, child, I can't make it any longer than it is.”
“What do you want me to drive round into the other street for? You've seen all there is to see. Got all your trading done, mother? Well, then I expect we'd better put for home. Now, Eddy, I told you 'No' once, and that's the end of it. Hush up now! Look here, sir! Do you want me to take and 'tend to you right before everybody? Well, I will now, if I hear another whimper out o' ye. Ck-ck-ck! Git ep there, Nelly.”
Some day, when we get big, and have whole, whole lots of money we're going to the circus every time it comes to town, to the real circus, the one you have to pay to get into. For if merely the street parade is so magnificent, what must the show itself be?
How people can sit at the table on circus day and stuff, and stuff the way they do is more than I can understand. You'd think they hadn't any more chances to eat than they had to go to the show. And they can find more things to do before they get started! And then, after the house is all locked up and everything, they've got to go back after a handkerchief! What does anybody want with a handkerchief at a circus?
It's exasperating enough to have to choose between going in the afternoon and not going at all. Why, sure, it's finer at night. Lots finer. You know that kind of a light the peanut-roaster man has got down by the post-office. Burns that kind of stuff they use to take out grease-spots. Ye-ah. Gasoline. Well, at the circus at night, they don't have just one light like that, but bunches and bunches of them on the tentpoles. No, silly! Of course not. Of course they don't set the tent afire. But say! What if they did, eh? The place would be all full of people, laughing at the country jake that comes out to ride the trick-mule, and you'd happen to look up and see where the canvas was ju-u-ust beginning to blaze, and you'd jump up and holler: “Fire! Fire!” as loud as ever you could because you saw it first, and you'd point to the place. Excitement? Well, I guess yes. The people would all run every which way, and fall all over themselves, and the women would squeal—And do you know what I'd do? Wouldn't just let myself down between the kind of bedslat benches, and drop to the ground, and lift up the canvas and there I'd be all safe. And after I was all safe, then I'd go back and rescue folks.
We-ell, I s'pose I'd have to rescue a girl. It seems they always do that. But it would be nicer, I think, to rescue some real rich man. He'd say: “My noble preserver! How can I sufficiently reward you?” and take out his pocketbook. And wouldn't say: “Take back your proffered gold,” and make like I was pushing it away, “take back your proffered gold. I but did my duty.” And then wouldn't forget all about it. And one day, after I'd forgotten all about, it, the man would die, and will me a million dollars, or a thousand, I don't know. Enough to make me rich.
And say! Wouldn't the animals get excited when they saw the show was afire? They'd just roar and roar, and upset the cages, and maybe they'd get loose. O-o-o-Oh! How about that? If there was a lion come at me I'd climb a tree. What would you do? Ah, your pa's shot-gun nothing! Why, you crazy, that would only infuriate him the more. What you want to do is to take an express rifle, like Doo Challoo did, and aim right for his heart. An express rifle is what you send off and get, and they ship it to you by express.
So you see what a fellow misses by having to go to the show in the afternoon, like the girls and the a-b-abs. The boys from across the tracks get to go at night. They have all the fun. When they go they don't have to poke along, and poke along, and keep hold of hands so as not to get lost.... Aw, hurry up, can't you? Don't you hear the band playing? It'll be all over before we get there.
But finally the lots are reached, and there are the tents, with all kinds of flags snapping from the centerpoles and the guy-ropes. And there are the sideshows. Alas! You never thought of the sideshows when you asked if you could go. And now it's too late. It must be fine in the side-shows. I never got to go to one. I didn't have the money. But if the big, painted banners, bulging in and out, as the wind plays with them, are anything to go by, it must be something grand to see the Fat Lady, and the Circassian Beauty, whose frizzled head will just about fit a bushel basket, and the Armless Wonder. They say he can take a pair of scissors with his toes and cut your picture out of paper just elegant.
Oh, and something else you miss by going in the afternoon. At night you can sneak around at the back, and when nobody is looking you can just lift up the canvas and go right in for nothing.... Why, what's wrong about that? Ah, you're too particular.... And if the canvasman catches you, you can commence to cry and say you had only forty cents, and wanted to see the circus so bad, and he'll take it and let you in, and you can have ten cents, don't you see, to spend for lemonade, red lemonade, you understand; and peanuts, the littlest bags, and the “on-riest” peanuts that ever were.
As far as I can see, the animal part of the show is just the same as it always was. The people that take you to the show always pretend to be interested in them, but it's my belief they stop and look only to tease you. Away, 'way back in ancient times, there used to be a man that took the folks around and told them what was in each cage, and where it came from, and how much it cost, and what useful purpose it served in the wise economy of nature, and all about it. That was before my time. But I can recollect something they had that they don't have any more. I can remember when Mr. Barnum first brought his show to our town. It didn't take much teasing to get to go to that, because in those days Mr. Barnum was a “biger man than old Grant.” “The Life of P. T. Barnum, Written by Himself” was on everybody's marble-topped centertable, just the same as “The History of the Great Rebellion.” You show some elderly person from out of town the church across the street from the Astor House, and say: “That's St. Paul's Chapel. General Montgomery's monument is in the chancel window. George Washington went to meeting there the day he was inaugurated president,” and your friend will say: “M-hm.” But you tell him that right across Broadway is where Barnum's Museum used to be, and he'll brighten right up and remember all about how Barnum strung a flag across to St. Paul's steeple and what a fuss the vestry of Trinity Parish made. That's something he knows about, that's part of the history of our country.
Well, when Mr. Barnum first came to our town, all around one tent were vans full of the very identical Moral Waxworks that we had read about, and had given up all hopes of ever seeing because New York was so far away. There was the Dying Zouave. Oh, that was a beauty! The Advance Courier said that “the crimson torrent of his heart's blood spouted in rhythmic jets as the tide of life ebbed silently away;” but I guess by the time they got to our town they must have run all out of pokeberry juice, for the “crimson torrent” didn't spout at all. But his bosom heaved every so often, and he rolled up his eyes something grand! I liked it, but my mother said it was horrid. That's the way with women. They don't like anything that anybody else does. There's no pleasing 'em. And she thought the Drunkard's Family was “kind o' low.” It wasn't either. It was fine, and taught a great moral lesson. I told her so, but she said it was low, just the same. She thought the Temperance Family was nice, but it wasn't anywhere near as good as the Drunkard's Family. Why, let me tell you. The Drunkard's Wife was in a ragged calico dress, and her eye was all black and blue, where he had hit her the week before. And the Drunkard had hold of a black quart bottle, and his nose was all red, and he wore a plug hat that was even rustier and more caved in than Elder Drown's, if such a thing were possible. And there was—But I can't begin to tell you of all the fine things Mr. Barnum had that year, but never had again.
Another thing Mr. Barnum had that year that never appeared again. It may be that after that time the Funny Old Clown did crack a joke, but I never heard him. The one that Mr. Barnum had got off the most comical thing you ever heard. I'll never forget it the longest day I live. Laugh? Why, I nearly took a conniption over it. It seems the clown got to crying about something.... Now what was it made him cry? Let me see now.... Ain't it queer I can't remember that? Fudge! Well, never mind now. It will come to me in a minute.
I feel kind of sorry for the poor little young ones that grow up and never know what a clown is like. Oh, yes, they have them to-day, after a fashion. They stub their toes and fall down the same as ever, but there is a whole mob of them and you can't take the interest in them that you could in “the one, the only, the inimitable” clown there used to be, a character of such importance that he got his name on the bills. He was a mighty man in those days. The ring-master was a kind of stuck-up fellow, very important in his own estimation, but he didn't have a spark of humor. Not a spark. And he'd be swelling around there, all so grand, and the clown, just to take him down a peg or two, would ask him a conundrum. And do you think he could ever guess one? Never. Not a one. And when the clown would tell him what the answer was, he'd be so vexed at himself that he'd try to take it out on the poor clown, and cut at him with his long whip. But Mr. Clown was just as spry in his shoes as he was under the hat, and he'd hop up on the ring-side out of the way, and squall out: “A-a-aah! Never touched me!” We had that for a byword. Oh, you'd die laughing at the comical remarks he'd make. And he'd be so quick about it. The ring-master would say something, and before you'd think, the clown would make a joke out of it.... I wish I could remember what it was he said that was so funny, the time he started crying. Seems to me it was something about his little brother.... Well, no matter.
Yes, sir, there are heads of families to-day, I'll bet you, that have grown up without ever having heard a clown sing a comic song, and ask the audience to join in the chorus. And if you say to such people: “Here we are again, Mr. Merryman,” or “Bring on another horse,” or “What will the little lady have now? the banners, my lord?” they look at you so funny. They don't know what you mean, and they don't know whether to get huffy or not. Well, I suppose it had to be that the Funny Old Clown with all his songs, and quips, and conundrums, and comical remarks should disappear. Perhaps he “didn't pay.”
I can't see that the rest of the show has changed so very much. Perhaps the trapeze performances are more marvelous and breath-suspending than they used to be. But they were far and far beyond what we could dream of then, and to go still farther as little impresses us as to be told that people live still even westerly of Idaho. The trapeze performers are up-to-date in one respect. The fellow that comes down with his arms folded, one leg stuck out and the other twined around the big rope, revolving slowly, slowly—well, the band plays the Intermezzo from “Cavalleria Rusticana” nowadays when he does that. It used to play: “O Thou, Sweet Spirit, Hear my Prayer!” But the lady in the riding-habit still smiles as if it hurt her when her horse walks on its hind legs; the bareback rider does the very same fancy steps as the horse goes round the ring in a rocking-chair lope; the attendants still slant the hurdles almost flat for the horse to jump; they still snake the banners under the rider's feet as he gives a little hop up, and they still bang him on the head with the paper-covered hoop to .... Hold on a minute. Now.
Now... That story the clown told that was so funny, that had something to do with those hoops. I wish I could think of it. It would make you laugh, I know.
People try to lay the blame of the modern circus's failure to interest them on the three rings. They say so many things to watch at once keeps them from being watching properly any one act. They can't give it the attention it deserves. But I'll tell you what's wrong: There isn't any Funny Old Clown, a particular one, to give it human interest. It is all too splendid, too magnificent, too far beyond us. We want to hear somebody talk once in awhile.
They pretended that the tent was too big for the clown to be heard, but I take notice it wasn't too big for the fellow to get up and declaim “The puffawmance ees not yait hawf ovah. The jaintlemanly agents will now pawss around the ring with tickets faw the concert.” I used to hate that man. When he said the performance was not yet half over, he lied like a dog, consarn his picture! There were only a few more acts to come. He knew it and we knew it. We wanted the show to go on and on, and always to be just as exciting as at the very first, and it wouldn't! We had got to the point where we couldn't be interested in anything any more. We were as little ones unable to prop their eyelids open and yet quarreling with bed. We were surfeited, but not satisfied. We sat there and pouted because there wasn't any more, and yet we couldn't but yawn at the act before us. We were mad at ourselves, and mad at everybody else. We clambered down the rattling bedslats seats, sour and sullen. We didn't want to look at the animals; we didn't want to do this, and we didn't want to do that. We whined and snarled, and wriggled and shook ourselves with temper, and we got a good hard slap, side of the head, right before everybody, and then we yelled as if we were being killed alive.
“Now, mister, if I ever take you any place again, you'll know it. I'd be ashamed of myself if I was you. Hush up! Hush up, I tell you. Now you mark. You're never going to the show again. Do you hear me? Never! I mean it. You're never going again.”
But at eventide there was light. After supper, after a little rest and a good deal of food, while chopping the kindling for morning (it's wonderful how useful employ tends to induce a cheerful view of life) out of her dazzling treasure-heap of jewels, Memory took up, one after another, a glowing recollection and viewed it with delight. The evening performance, the one all lighted up with bunches and bunches of lights, was a-preparing, and in the gentle breeze the far-off music waved as it had been a flag. A harsh and rumbling noise as of heavy timbers falling tore through the tissue of sweet sounds. The horses in the barn next door screamed in their stalls to hear it. Ages and ages ago, on distant wind-swept plains their ancestors had hearkened to that hunting-cry, and summoned up their valor and their speed. It still thrilled in the blood of these patient slaves of man, though countless generations of them had never even so much as seen a lion.
“And is that all the difference, pa, that the lion roars at night and the ostrich in the daytime?”
Out on the back porch in the deepening dusk we sat, with eyes relaxed and dreaming, and watched the stars that powdered the dark sky. Before our inward vision passed in review the day of splendor and renown. We sighed, at last, but it was the happy sigh of him who has full dined. Ambition was digesting. In our turn, when we grew up, we, too, were to do the deeds of high emprise. We were to be somebody.
(I never heard of anybody sitting up to see the show depart. And yet it seems to me that would be the best time to run off with it.)
The next day we visited the lots. It was no dream. See the litter that mussed up the place.
We were all there. None had heard the man that runs the show say genially: “Yes, I think we can arrange to take you with us.” Here was the ring; here the tent-pole holes, and here a scrap of paper torn from a hoop the bareback rider leaped through.... Oh, now I know what I was going to tell you that the clown said. The comicalest thing!
He picked up one of these hoops and began to sniffle.
So the ring-master asked him what he was crying about.
“I—I—was thinking of my mother. Smf! My good old mother!”
So the ring-master asked him what made him think of his mother.
“This.” And he held up the paper-covered hoop.
The ring-master couldn't see how that put the clown in mind of his mother. He was awful dumb, that man.
“It looks just like the pancakes she used to make for us.”
Well, sir, we just hollered and laughed at that. And after we had quieted down a little, the ringmaster says: “As big as that?”
“Bigger,” says the clown. “Why, she used to make 'em so big we used 'em for bedclothes.”
“Indeed” (Just like that. He took it all in, just as if it was so.)
“Oh, my, yes! I mind one time I was sleeping with my little brother, and I waked up just as cold—Brr! But I was cold!”
“But how could that be, sir? You just now said you had pancakes for bedclothes.”
“Yes, but my little brother got hungry in the night, and et up all the cover.”
Laugh? Why, they screamed. Me? I thought I'd just about go up. But the ring master never cracked a smile. He didn't see the joke at all.
Good-by, old clown, friend of our childhood, goodby, good-by forever! And you, our other friend, the street parade, must you go, too? And you, the gorgeous show-bills, must you tread the path toward the sundown? Good-by! Good-by! In that dreary land where you are going, the Kingdom of the Ausgespielt, it may comfort you to recollect the young hearts you have made happy in the days that were, but never more can be again.
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