Rates of admission are conspicuous everywhere. Children under two
and a half years of age are admitted free; from that age to ten a
half-ticket is required, and older persons must pay full charge.
Wonderful and varied are the devices resorted to in the effort to
evade legitimate payment. Children who at home are in their teens have
dwarfed to babyhood at the circus entrance. Parents glibly insist
that robust offsprings are under nine years, and panting fathers and
mothers present themselves, in the palpable attempt to deceive, with an
armful of boy or girl who has reached the full-rate limit. Watchful and
inexorable door-keepers receive them, demand and finally are handed the
correct sum, and composedly hear themselves styled “a pack of villains
and swindlers.” Ill-grace characterizes those who would cheat the
circus.
To the main entrance come the hundreds of written orders for tickets,
issued by the advance agents who have covered the district with bills
and posters. As a precautionary measure against imposition, two sets of
keen-eyed employees have subsequently prowled over the routes and made
note when storekeeper or householder has not kept faith. If the flaring
advertisement has been removed, disfigured, or hidden under that of a
rival show, a memorandum is made. Thus a list of those who are and
who are not entitled to recognition is in the hands of the management
when the doors open. Each claim presented to the ticket taker has a
corresponding number on the large sheet of paper which the general
manager holds, and whether or not the holder enters free depends on its
report. Very crestfallen and embarrassed, generally, is the man who
thought he could profit without rendering service in return. He had
not calculated on the thorough business system with which he was in
contact. If the applicant has kept his promise he is welcomed to the
show, given what his order calls for in the way of seats and number of
admissions, and passes inside.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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