he 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.
I tried to get pa to let the police go and drive them off, but he said
he hadn't no time to go and wake up the police, and they wouldn't get
around anyway before the middle of the week. So pa took a tent stake and
started for the green corn roast. The Indians were taking turns dancing
and eating roasted corn, and they had a barrel of beer, and I knew
enough abo
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