The freak business is divided into about three varieties, foreign, domestic and fake. In the first class, the collectors travel all over the world in search of rarities, but the very best freaks come from India and the Malay peninsula. In those countries there are people who breed freaks. They buy young children and animals and deform them while their bones are soft, by all manner of means. Then they are constantly on the lookout for genuine, natural freaks, and in those lands the birth of a freak occurs very frequently. The headquarters of this business is at Singapore. There are, too, a number of men who devote themselves to the discovering and placing of freaks of all kinds and varieties, and scarcely a day goes by in winter that we do not receive photographs and illustrated circulars from some freak merchant or other. Of course, there are faked freak men--a perfect host in themselves. If the proprietor of some little show needs an additional attraction and does not have any money to hire something good--for, like everything else, freaks have their price--he can get something for little money that will serve his purpose. The real, genuine, live freaks always command high prices--from $50 to $800 per week each--and travel all over the world in order to exhibit themselves. CHAPTER VI AT THE MAIN ENTRANCE I have always regarded the two men who sell tickets with a feeling of profound awe and solemn wonder. There is something almost uncanny about their daily exhibition. Their flying hands put to shame the clutching display of the octopus. No quicker-brained, more resolute or more peculiarly gifted men are with the show. They face, undaunted and calm, twice a day, a scene of confusion, disorder and clamoring demand which would put to his heels one not fitted perfectly by nature and experience for the part. To see them working their hands with lightning rapidity, directing, advising and correcting, is to me as interesting a study as the whole passing show affords. When the crowd begins to gather about the ticket wagon ready with the price of admission, it would make infinitely easier the work of the men inside if the sale began then. But business astuteness bids delay. The throng grows fast, fills the enclosure and swarms over the grounds. The side-show orator, meanwhile, directs his seductive eloquence at the perspiring mass and reaps a harvest. This is an advantage gained by no undue haste in distributing tickets.