Boy's Town

  IX.

  CIRCUSES AND SHOWS.

  WHAT every boy expected to do, some time or other, was to run off. Heexpected to do this because the scheme offered an unlimited field to theimagination, and because its fulfilment would give him the highestdistinction among the other fellows. To run off was held to be the onlyway for a boy to right himself against the wrongs and hardships of aboy's life. As far as the Boy's Town was concerned, no boy had anythingto complain of; the boys had the best time in the world there, and in amanner they knew it. But there were certain things that they felt no boyought to stand, and these things were sometimes put upon them at school,but usually at home. In fact, nearly all the things that a fellowintended to run off for were done to him by those who ought to have beenthe kindest to him. Some boys' mothers had the habit of making them stopand do something for them just when they were going away with thefellows. Others would not let them go in swimming as often as theywanted, and, if they saw them with their shirts on wrong side out, wouldnot believe that they could get turned in climbing a fence. Others madethem split kindling and carry in wood, and even saw wood. None of thesethings, in a simple form, was enough to make a boy run off, but theyprepared his mind for it, and when complicated with whipping they werejust cause for it. Weeding the garden, though, was a thing that almost,in itself, was enough to make a fellow run off.

  Not many of the boys really had to saw wood, though a good many of thefellows' fathers had saws and bucks in their wood-sheds. There werepublic sawyers who did most of the wood-sawing; and they came up withtheir bucks on their shoulders, and asked for the job almost as soon asthe wood was unloaded before your door. The most popular one with theboys was a poor half-wit known among them as Morn; and he was a favoritewith them because he had fits, and because, when he had a fit, he wouldseem to fly all over the woodpile. The boys would leave anything to seeMorn in a fit, and he always had a large crowd round him as soon as thecry went out that he was beginning to have one. They watched the haplesscreature with grave, unpitying, yet not unfriendly interest, tooignorant of the dark ills of life to know how deeply tragic was thespectacle that entertained them, and how awfully present in Morn'scontortions was the mystery of God's ways with his children, some ofwhom he gives to happiness and some to misery. When Morn began to pickhimself weakly up, with eyes of pathetic bewilderment, they helped himfind his cap, and tried to engage him in conversation, for the pleasureof seeing him twist his mouth when he said, of a famous town drunkardwhom he admired, "He's a strong man; he eats liquor." It was probablypoor Morn's ambition to eat liquor himself, and the boys who followedthat drunkard about to plague him had a vague respect for his lamentableappetite.

  None of the boys ever did run off, except the son of one of thepreachers. He was a big boy, whom my boy remotely heard of, but neversaw, for he lived in another part of the town; but his adventure wasknown to all the boys, and his heroism rated high among them. It tooknothing from this, in their eyes, that he was found, homesick and cryingin Cincinnati, and was glad to come back--the great fact was that he hadrun off; nothing could change or annul that. If he had made any mistake,it was in not running off with a circus, for that was the true way ofrunning off. Then, if you were ever seen away from home, you were seentumbling through a hoop and alighting on the crupper of a barebackedpiebald, and if you ever came home you came home in a gilded chariot,and you flashed upon the domestic circle in flesh-colored tights andspangled breech-cloth. As soon as the circus-bills began to be put upyou began to hear that certain boys were going to run off with thatcircus, and the morning after it left town you heard they had gone, butthey always turned up at school just the same. It was believed that thecircus-men would take any boy who wanted to go with them, and wouldfight off his friends if they tried to get him away.

  The boys made a very careful study of the circus-bills, and afterwards,when the circus came, they held the performance to a strict account forany difference between the feats and their representation. For afortnight beforehand they worked themselves up for the arrival of thecircus into a fever of fear and hope, for it was always a question witha great many whether they could get their fathers to give them the moneyto go in. The full price was two bits, and the half-price was a bit, ora Spanish _real_, then a commoner coin than the American dime in theWest; and every boy, for that time only, wished to be little enough tolook young enough to go in for a bit. Editors of newspapers had a freeticket for every member of their families; and my boy was sure of goingto the circus from the first rumor of its coming. But he was none theless deeply thrilled by the coming event, and he was up early on themorning of the great day, to go out and meet the circus processionbeyond the corporation line.

  I do not really know how boys live through the wonder and the glory ofsuch a sight. Once there were two chariots--one held the band inred-and-blue uniforms, and was drawn by eighteen piebald horses; and theother was drawn by a troop of Shetland ponies, and carried in a vastmythical sea-shell little boys in spangled tights and little girls inthe gauze skirts and wings of fairies. There was not a flaw in thissplendor to the young eyes that gloated on it, and that followed it inrapture through every turn and winding of its course in the Boy's Town;nor in the magnificence of the actors and actresses, who came riding twoby two in their circus-dresses after the chariots, and looking somehaughty and contemptuous, and others quiet and even bored, as if it werenothing to be part of such a procession. The boys tried to make them outby the pictures and names on the bills: which was Rivers, the bare-backrider, and which was O'Dale, the champion tumbler; which was theIndia-rubber man, which the ring-master, which the clown. Covered withdust, gasping with the fatigue of a three hours' run beside theprocession, but fresh at heart as in the beginning, they arrived with iton the Commons, where the tent-wagons were already drawn up, and thering was made, and mighty men were driving the iron-headed tent-stakes,and stretching the ropes of the great skeleton of the pavilion whichthey were just going to clothe with canvas. The boys were not allowed tocome anywhere near, except three or four who got leave to fetch waterfrom a neighboring well, and thought themselves richly paid withhalf-price tickets. The other boys were proud to pass a word with themas they went by with their brimming buckets; fellows who had money to goin would have been glad to carry water just for the glory of comingclose to the circus-men. They stood about in twos and threes, and layupon the grass in groups debating whether a tan-bark ring was betterthan a sawdust ring; there were different opinions. They came as nearthe wagons as they dared, and looked at the circus-horses munching hayfrom the tail-boards, just like common horses. The wagons were leftstanding outside of the tent; but when it was up, the horses were takeninto the dressing-room, and then the boys, with many a backward look atthe wide spread of canvas, and the flags and streamers floating over itfrom the centre-pole (the centre-pole was revered almost like adistinguished personage), ran home to dinner so as to get back good andearly, and be among the first to go in. All round, before the circusdoors were open, the doorkeepers of the side-shows were inviting peopleto come in and see the giants and fat woman and boa-constrictors, andthere were stands for peanuts and candy and lemonade; the vendors cried,"Ice-cold lemonade, from fifteen hundred miles under ground! Walk up,roll up, tumble up, any way to get up!" The boys thought this brilliantdrolling, but they had no time to listen after the doors were open, andthey had no money to spend on side-shows or dainties, anyway. Inside thetent, they found it dark and cool, and their hearts thumped in theirthroats with the wild joy of being there; they recognized one anotherwith amaze, as if they had not met for years, and the excitement keptgrowing, as other fellows came in. It was lots of fun, too, watching thecountry-jakes, as the boys called the farmer-folk, and seeing how greenthey looked, and how some of them tried to act smart with the circus-menthat came round with oranges to sell. But the great thing was to seewhether fellows that said they were going to hook in really got in. Theboys held it to be a high and creditable thing to hook into a show ofany kind, but hooking into
a circus was something that a fellow ought tobe held in special honor for doing. He ran great risks, and if heescaped the vigilance of the massive circus-man who patrolled theoutside of the tent with a cowhide and a bulldog, perhaps he merited thefame he was sure to win.

  I do not know where boys get some of the notions of morality that governthem. These notions are like the sports and plays that a boy leaves offas he gets older to the boys that are younger. He outgrows them, andother boys grow into them, and then outgrow them as he did. Perhaps theycome down to the boyhood of our time from the boyhood of the race, andthe unwritten laws of conduct may have prevailed among the earliestAryans on the plains of Asia that I now find so strange in a retrospectof the Boy's Town. The standard of honor there was, in a certain way,very high among the boys; they would have despised a thief as hedeserved, and I cannot remember one of them who might not have beensafely trusted. None of them would have taken an apple out of amarket-wagon, or stolen a melon from a farmer who came to town with it;but they would all have thought it fun, if not right, to rob an orchardor hook a watermelon out of a patch. This would have been a foray intothe enemy's country, and the fruit of the adventure would have been thesame as the plunder of a city, or the capture of a vessel belonging tohim on the high seas. In the same way, if one of the boys had seen acircus-man drop a quarter, he would have hurried to give it back to him,but he would only have been proud to hook into the circus-man's show,and the other fellows would have been proud of his exploit, too, assomething that did honor to them all. As a person who enclosed boundsand forbade trespass, the circus-man constituted himself the enemy ofevery boy who respected himself, and challenged him to practise any sortof strategy. There was not a boy in the crowd that my boy went with whowould have been allowed to hook into a circus by his parents; yethooking in was an ideal that was cherished among them, that was talkedof, and that was even sometimes attempted, though not often. Once, whena fellow really hooked in, and joined the crowd that had ignobly paid,one of the fellows could not stand it. He asked him just how and wherehe got in, and then he went to the door, and got back his money from thedoorkeeper upon the plea that he did not feel well; and in five or tenminutes he was back among the boys, a hero of such moral grandeur aswould be hard to describe. Not one of the fellows saw him as he reallywas--a little lying, thievish scoundrel. Not even my boy saw him so,though he had on some other point of personal honesty the most fantasticscruples.

  The boys liked to be at the circus early so as to make sure of thegrand entry of the performers into the ring, where they caracoled roundon horseback, and gave a delicious foretaste of the wonders to come. Thefellows were united in this, but upon other matters feeling varied--someliked tumbling best; some the slack-rope; some bare-back riding; somethe feats of tossing knives and balls and catching them. There never wasmore than one ring in those days; and you were not tempted to break yourneck and set your eyes forever askew, by trying to watch all the thingsthat went on at once in two or three rings. The boys did not miss thesmallest feats of any performance, and they enjoyed them every one, notequally, but fully. They had their preferences, of course, as I havehinted; and one of the most popular acts was that where a horse has beentrained to misbehave, so that nobody can mount him; and after the actorshave tried him, the ring-master turns to the audience, and asks if somegentleman among them wants to try it. Nobody stirs, till at last a tipsycountry-jake is seen making his way down from one of the top-seatstowards the ring. He can hardly walk, he is so drunk, and the clown hasto help him across the ring-board, and even then he trips and rolls overon the sawdust, and has to be pulled to his feet. When they bring him upto the horse, he falls against it; and the little fellows think he willcertainly get killed. But the big boys tell the little fellows to shutup and watch out. The ring-master and the clown manage to get thecountry-jake on to the broad platform on the horse's back, and then thering-master cracks his whip, and the two supes who have been holding thehorse's head let go, and the horse begins cantering round the ring. Thelittle fellows are just sure the country-jake is going to fall off, hereels and totters so; but the big boys tell them to keep watching out;and pretty soon the country-jake begins to straighten up. He begins tounbutton his long gray overcoat, and then he takes it off and throws itinto the ring, where one of the supes catches it. Then he sticks a shortpipe into his mouth, and pulls on an old wool hat, and flourishes astick that the supe throws to him, and you see that he is an Irishmanjust come across the sea; and then off goes another coat, and he comesout a British soldier in white duck trousers and red coat. That comesoff, and he is an American sailor, with his hands on his hips dancing ahornpipe. Suddenly away flash wig and beard and false-face, thepantaloons are stripped off with the same movement, the actor stoops forthe reins lying on the horse's neck, and James Rivers, the greatestthree-horse rider in the world nimbly capers on the broad pad, andkisses his hand to the shouting and cheering spectators as he dashesfrom the ring past the braying and bellowing brass-band into thedressing-room!

  The big boys have known all along that he was not a real country-jake;but when the trained mule begins, and shakes everybody off, just likethe horse, and another country-jake gets up, and offers to bet that hecan ride that mule, nobody can tell whether he is a real country-jake ornot. This is always the last thing in the performance, and the boys haveseen with heavy hearts many signs openly betokening the end which theyknew was at hand. The actors have come out of the dressing-room door,some in their everyday clothes, and some with just overcoats on overtheir circus-dresses, and they lounge about near the band-stand watchingthe performance in the ring. Some of the people are already getting upto go out, and stand for this last act, and will not mind the shouts of"Down in front! Down there!" which the boys eagerly join in, to eke outtheir bliss a little longer by keeping away even the appearance ofanything transitory in it. The country-jake comes stumbling awkwardlyinto the ring, but he is perfectly sober, and he boldly leaps astridethe mule, which tries all its arts to shake him off, plunging, kicking,rearing. He sticks on, and everybody cheers him, and the owner of themule begins to get mad and to make it do more things to shake thecountry-jake off. At last, with one convulsive spring, it flings himfrom its back, and dashes into the dressing-room, while the country-jakepicks himself up and vanishes among the crowd.

  A man mounted on a platform in the ring is imploring the ladies andgentlemen to keep their seats, and to buy tickets for the negro-minstrelentertainment which is to follow, but which is not included in the priceof admission. The boys would like to stay, but they have not the money,and they go out clamoring over the performance, and trying to decidewhich was the best feat. As to which was the best actor, there is neverany question; it is the clown, who showed by the way he turned a doublesomersault that he can do anything, and who chooses to be clown simplybecause he is too great a creature to enter into rivalry with the otheractors.

  There will be another performance in the evening, with real fightsoutside between the circus-men and the country-jakes, and perhaps someof the Basin rounders, but the boys do not expect to come; that would betoo much. The boy's brother once stayed away in the afternoon, and wentat night with one of the jour printers; but he was not able to reportthat the show was better than it was in the afternoon. He did not gethome till nearly ten o'clock, though, and he saw the sides of the tentdropped before the people got out; that was a great thing; and what wasgreater yet, and reflected a kind of splendor on the boy at second hand,was that the jour printer and the clown turned out to be old friends.After the circus, the boy actually saw them standing near thecentre-pole talking together; and the next day the jour showed thegrease that had dripped on his coat from the candles. Otherwise the boymight have thought it was a dream, that some one he knew had talked onequal terms with the clown. The boys were always intending to stay upand see the circus go out of town, and they would have done so, buttheir mothers would not let them. This may have been one reason why noneof them ever ran off with a circus.

  As soon
as a circus had been in town, the boys began to have circuses oftheir own, and to practise for them. Everywhere you could see boysupside down, walking on their hands or standing on them with their legsdangling over, or stayed against house walls. It was easy to stand onyour head; one boy stood on his head so much that he had to have itshaved, in the brain fever that he got from standing on it; but that didnot stop the other fellows. Another boy fell head downwards from a railwhere he was skinning-the-cat, and nearly broke his neck, and made it sosore that it was stiff ever so long. Another boy, who was playingSamson, almost had his leg torn off by the fellows that were pulling atit with a hook; and he did have the leg of his pantaloons torn off.Nothing could stop the boys but time, or some other play coming in; andcircuses lasted a good while. Some of the boys learned to turnhand-springs; anybody could turn cart-wheels; one fellow, across theriver, could just run along and throw a somersault and light on hisfeet; lots of fellows could light on their backs; but if you had aspring-board, or shavings under a bank, like those by the turning-shop,you could practise for somersaults pretty safely.

  All the time you were practising you were forming your circus company.The great trouble was not that any boy minded paying five or ten pins tocome in, but that so many fellows wanted to belong there were hardly anyleft to form an audience. You could get girls, but even as spectatorsgirls were a little _too_ despicable; they did not know anything; theyhad no sense; if a follow got hurt they cried. Then another thing was,where to have the circus. Of course it was simply hopeless to think of atent, and a boy's circus was very glad to get a barn. The boy whosefather owned the barn had to get it for the circus without his fatherknowing it; and just as likely as not his mother would hear the noiseand come out and break the whole thing up while you were in the verymiddle of it. Then there were all sorts of anxieties and perplexitiesabout the dress. You could do something by turning your roundaboutinside out, and rolling your trousers up as far as they would go; butwhat a fellow wanted to make him a real circus actor was a long pair ofwhite cotton stockings, and I never knew a fellow that got a pair; Iheard of many a fellow who was said to have got a pair; but when youcame down to the fact, they vanished like ghosts when you try to verifythem. I believe the fellows always expected to get them out of abureau-drawer or the clothes-line at home, but failed. In most otherways, a boy's circus was always a failure, like most other things boysundertake. They usually broke up under the strain of rivalry; everybodywanted to be the clown or ring-master; or else the boy they got the barnof behaved badly, and went into the house crying, and all the fellowshad to run.

  There were only two kinds of show known by that name in the Boy's Town:a Nigger Show, or a performance of burnt-cork minstrels; and an AnimalShow, or a strolling menagerie; and the boys always meant a menageriewhen they spoke of a show, unless they said just what sort of show. Theonly perfect joy on earth in the way of an entertainment, of course, wasa circus, but after the circus the show came unquestionably next. Itmade a processional entry into the town almost as impressive as thecircus's, and the boys went out to meet it beyond the corporation linein the same way. It always had two elephants, at least, and four or fivecamels, and sometimes there was a giraffe. These headed the procession,the elephants in the very front, with their keepers at their heads, andthen the camels led by halters dangling from their sneering lips andcontemptuous noses. After these began to come the show-wagons, withpictures on their sides, very flattered portraits of the wild beasts andbirds inside; lions first, then tigers (never meaner than Royal Bengalones, which the boys understood to be a superior breed), then leopards,then pumas and panthers; then bears, then jackals and hyenas; then bearsand wolves; then kangaroos, musk-oxen, deer, and such harmless cattle;and then ostriches, emus, lyre-birds, birds-of-Paradise and all therest. From time to time the boys ran back from the elephants and camelsto get what good they could out of the scenes in which these hiddenwonders were dramatized in acts of rapine or the chase, but they alwayscame forward to the elephants and camels again. Even with them they hadto endure a degree of denial, for although you could see most of thecamels' figures, the elephants were so heavily draped that it was a kindof disappointment to look at them. The boys kept as close as they could,and came as near getting under the elephants' feet as the keepers wouldallow; but, after all, they were driven off a good deal and had to keepstealing back. They gave the elephants apples and bits of cracker andcake, and some tried to put tobacco into their trunks; though they knewvery well that it was nearly certain death to do so; for any elephantthat was deceived that way would recognize the boy that did it, and killhim the next time he came, if it was twenty years afterwards. The boysused to believe that the Miami bridge would break down under theelephants if they tried to cross it, and they would have liked to see itdo it, but no one ever saw it, perhaps because the elephants alwayswaded the river. Some boys had seen them wading it, and stopping todrink and squirt the water out of their trunks. If an elephant got a boythat had given him tobacco into the river, he would squirt water on himtill he drowned him. Still, some boys always tried to give the elephantstobacco, just to see how they would act for the time being.

  A show was not so much in favor as a circus, because there was so littleperformance in the ring. You could go round and look at the animals,mostly very sleepy in their cages, but you were not allowed to pokethem through the bars, or anything; and when you took your seat therewas nothing much till Herr Driesbach entered the lions' cage, and beganto make them jump over his whip. It was some pleasure to see him put hishead between the jaws of the great African King of Beasts, but the lionnever did anything to him, and so the act wanted a true dramatic climax.The boys would really rather have seen a bare-back rider, like JamesRivers, turn a back-somersault and light on his horse's crupper, anytime, though they respected Herr Driesbach, too; they did not care muchfor a woman who once went into the lions' cage and made them jump round.

  If you had the courage you could go up the ladder into the curtainedtower on the elephant's back, and ride round the ring with some of theother fellows; but my boy at least never had the courage; and he neverwas of those who mounted the trick pony and were shaken off as soon asthey got on. It seemed to be a good deal of fun, but he did not dare torisk it; and he had an obscure trouble of mind when, the last thing,four or five ponies were brought out with as many monkeys tied on theirbacks, and set to run a race round the ring. The monkeys always lookedvery miserable, and even the one who won the race, and rode roundafterwards with an American flag in his hand and his cap very muchcocked over his left eye, did not seem to cheer up any.

  The boys had their own beliefs about the different animals, and one ofthese concerned the inappeasable ferocity of the zebra. I do not knowwhy the zebra should have had this repute, for he certainly never didanything to deserve it; but, for the matter of that, he was like all theother animals. Bears were not much esteemed, but they would have been ifthey could have been really seen hugging anybody to death. It was alwayshoped that some of the fiercest animals would get away and have to behunted down, and retaken after they had killed a lot of dogs. If theelephants, some of them, had gone crazy, it would have been something,for then they would have roamed up and down the turnpike smashingbuggies and wagons, and had to be shot with the six-pound cannon thatwas used to celebrate the Fourth of July with.

  Another thing that was against the show was that the animals were fedafter it was out, and you could not see the tigers tearing their preywhen the great lumps of beef were thrown them. There was somehow not somuch chance of hooking into a show as a circus, because the seats didnot go all round, and you could be seen under the cages as soon as yougot in under the canvas. I never heard of a boy that hooked into a show;perhaps nobody ever tried.

  A show had the same kind of smell as a circus, up to a certain point,and then its smell began to be different. Both smelt of tan-bark orsaw-dust and trodden grass, and both smelt of lemonade and cigars; butafter that a show had its own smell of animals. I have found in later
life that this is a very offensive smell on a hot day; but I do notbelieve a boy ever thinks so; for him it is just a different smell froma circus smell. There were two other reasons why a show was not as muchfun as a circus, and one was that it was thought instructive, andfellows went who were not allowed to go to circuses. But the greatreason of all was that you could not have an animal show of your own asyou could a circus. You could not get the animals; and no boy livingcould act a camel, or a Royal Bengal tiger, or an elephant so as to lookthe least like one.

  Of course you could have negro shows, and the boys often had them; butthey were not much fun, and you were always getting the black on yourshirt-sleeves.

  THE CIRCUS.]