Stolid yokels fill the enclosure in front. Two men are proclaiming with fluency and skill and oratorical effect the wonders of the side-show, and a row of huge banners adds weight to their discourse. Pictured by word and brush are the wild man, the midget, the Egyptian giant, the woman ventriloquist, the knife throwers, the fortune tellers, the electric lady, the snake charmer, the others who make up the collection of oddities, and the group of negro jubilee singers. The band thumps seductively inside and frequently, as an evidence of good faith, one of the freaks is called to the front for a moment’s survey. Doubts vanish and the crowd hesitates no longer, when suddenly as the _pièce de resistance_ is brandished aloft, impaled on a slender iron rod, a raw hunk of beef. It is to be the wild man’s dinner! By far the most interesting specimen in our side-show is this wild man. His history is long and eventful. The side-show lecturer tells it vividly, many times a day, and invariably the same when he is not in a facetious mood. The narrative, however, is always thrilling, never commonplace. A curtain shrouds the interior of the cage in which the creature “lives and subsists in a state of nature.” Pulled aside, it reveals a gloomy den, half filled with hay, where crouches, clawed and tusked, and scantily clad in skins, the rude savage. The fleeting and obscure view of the monster afforded is amply satisfying to the timid, and the venturesome see the curtain drawn, impressed. A discharged employee in a spirit of malice spread a tale of unexpected exposures. The fellow asserted that once the wild man was eagerly “shooting craps” with a colored canvasman, and a second time had hastily torn a clay pipe from his mouth and become again a weird, uncivilized being. The manager was very indignant over the infamous recital; and that very evening came a full exoneration. The wild man escaped. (Business had been unsatisfactory for several days.) The alarm was sounded throughout the town and spread terror. We all said we feared the worst. Armed men were sent in pursuit. The fugitive was captured in a forest back of the lot and returned, shrieking, biting and fighting fiercely, to his den. Order was restored and the circus turned away a thousand persons for lack of room at the evening’s performance. The side-show was not empty of visitors for a month afterwards.