SOME ACCOUNT OF AN AMERICAN SHOWMAN, WITH A LITTLE INSIGHT INTO THE SHOW BUSINESS. Right in the heart of London--if London may be said to have any heart--is a tavern kept by an American, which is the headquarters of American "professionals," as showmen delight to call themselves. You can never go there without meeting managers, nigger minstrels, song-and-dance-men, unappreciated actors, and all sorts of people who prefer living from hand to mouth and wearing no shirts, in this way, than to making a fortune in any regular business. I go there frequently from sheer loneliness, and to hear the kindly American language spoken; and, besides, a man alone is generally in bad company, for the heart of man is deceitful and desperately wicked. Any company that is fair to middling is better than none at all. Even a hostler can tell you something you don't know. You may excel him in the philosophy of finance, but when it comes to horses you are nowhere. I met one circus manager who is over here, as he expressed it, to "secure talent," and he proved a delight. He was short and very thick, and wore a sack coat, of rough material, and a little mastiff followed him about constantly. His hat and necktie were something too utterly gorgeous for description, his face was of a peculiarly puffy purple, and his nose blazed like a comet. And he would sit and talk of his business by the hour, keeping before him all the time a glass of British brandy and water, which he pronounced "goodish." You could be sure he was a showman as far as you could see him. My first interview with him was something like this:-- "I shall have the biggest list of genooine attractions that ever was taken across the Atlantic, and if I don't astonish the showmen of our great country, as well as the people, I'm a sinner. I have got a baby elephant, and a genooine Babulus, capchered by Stanley in the interior of Africa, at a great loss of life, and I am after a performer sich as the world never seen. She does an act on the trapeze that is so risky, that sooner or later she _must_ be killed. There ain't any doubt about it. I have seen her. She runs up a rope like a squirrel, and jumps from a horizontal bar, twenty feet, catching hold of her pardner's hands, and then plunges down from his body head-fust, at the frightful altitood of seventy feet, catchin' a rope twenty feet from the ground. If the lights are ever wrong by a half inch, or if she ever miscalculates a hair's breadth, she is a goner, sure." [Illustration: IF SHE EVER MISCALCULATES BY A HAIR'S BREADTH, SHE'S A GONER, SURE.] And the enthusiastic old gentleman rubbed his hands in glee, as though the death of a performer was a consummation most devoutly to be wished. [Sidenote: THE TRAPEZE ARTIST.] "Do people enjoy such perilous feats?"