Peck's Bad Boy with the CircusPeck, George W. (George Wilbur)
General
Peck's Bad Boy with the Circus
Peck, George W. (George Wilbur)
Boys -- Juvenile fiction; Circus -- Juvenile fiction
Last year our press agents filled up the members of the local press with
ginger ale, and when we struck Philadelphia this time the newspapers had
sworn out warrants for our show, on the charge of compounding a felony,
which I suppose is the legal name for ginger ale. The way the Quakers
patronize a show is to put on their gray clothes, and their big white
hats and stand on the corners when the parade goes by, and never crack a
smile, or act interested, and when the parade has passed they go to the
circus lot and see the balloon ascension, and stand on wagon wheels and
try to look over the side of the tent at the performance, and then they
kick because the audience on the back seats cut off their view from the
wagon wheels.
Last year our show killed a Quaker, and the community is down on us. The
Quaker got in the show because he owned a half inch of ground that its
tents were on, and he stood right by the ring, and when the champion
female rider was suspended in the air between two bareback horses, he
leaned over too far inside the ring, and she kicked his hat clear up to
the roof of the tent, and a female trapeze performer up there caught it
and sat down on it on the trapeze. The old Quaker had heart disease and
fell dead. What the Quakers complained of was that after the Quaker's
remains had been removed from the ring, that the show went right on.
They claimed that we ought to have shown proper respect for the dead by
closing the show for 30 days, and wearing crape on our arms, but a
circus is not built that way.
Ordinarily it may be quiet enough in Philadelphia on Sunday, but pa
found that he had more of a run for his money than at any place we have
been so far. We have had a tribe of Indians with our wild west
department all summer, and pa has not stood very well with the Indians
since he was in charge of the show at Fort Wayne, and they all got
drunk, and he had them tied up to the poles around the ring until they
got sober. They have laid for pa ever since, and it was only a matter of
time when they got him. Then at Pittsburg our manager picked up a
company of cannibals that had got left over from the St. Louis fair, and
who agreed to perform for their board and clothes, and as they don't
wear any clothes to speak of, and only eat dog week days, and hope to
get a human being to roast on Sunday, it seemed a pretty good bargain.
Well, the Indians got permission to hold a green corn dance in a piece
of woods near the circus lot, and the management got them a wagon load
of corn, and they had built a fire and were roasting the corn, and
dancing, and pa didn't know about it, and just after dark the Quaker who
owned the woods complained to pa, who was on watch Sunday night, that
his Indians had got off the reservation and were preparing to go on the
warpath, and he wanted them to get off his premises. Pa said he would go
right over and drive them back to the tents.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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