The general manager appears like magic when there is an accident or injury in which the circus is involved. These are of almost daily occurrence. The lion or tiger may gleefully claw the too far outstretched hand of the curious boy; a horse perhaps kicks or bites; there are runaways and runovers, and a variety of other mishaps extending from cars to lot and from arrival to departure. The general manager always strives to be at the scene ahead of the artful lawyer, who would fain share in the damages. He is apologetic and regretful, offers cash remuneration and receives a written statement of satisfaction. Not until then does he breathe freely; but rest assured that in the transaction he has given no outward indication of his troubled mind and that in the bargain he has made the circus has not come out second best. The show people who watch him daily grow to look on him as ubiquitous. Many and marvellous are the tales told him with the design of securing free admission. The street commissioner is a permanent applicant. The general manager knows the story by heart. The heavy pole wagons have damaged the highways; a few tickets will wipe out the injury. He generally gets in. The man whose land has been encroached upon by the tents; the policeman with the small army of eager children; the householder who avers the elephant’s prehensile trunk mutilated an inviting tree; the alderman’s brother; the clergyman who declares he has always heretofore been a welcome guest, and the long list of others with claim to recognition, get a hearing with varying success. The policeman is the most persistent. The circus is in a measure at his mercy and he is insatiable. He becomes a numerous husband and his relatives are legion. It is for the general manager to get quarter and he must go about it without offending; for there may be need for blue-coated service before the day is done, and the show must not lose official favor. “Plain-clothes” men, the policemen assigned to duty at circus in ordinary street attire, are usually a nuisance. In the smaller towns they have little or no conception of their duties--to watch out for crooks without exciting suspicion--and they hover about the entrance, proud to be on familiar and confidential terms with the management, “passing-in” acquaintances, bothering with questions and generally obstructing the smooth progress of things. Their detective instinct and experience are nil, and their questionable value to the circus is confined to knowing the town drunkard and the tough of local notoriety, whose demeanor is sober and demure enough when opposed to the ready rank and file of the show.