Side Show Studies | Page 2

said the Proprietor as three deep scratches in his head
were being plastered up. "I couldn't afford to take any chances of an
accident, and he would have been shot if he had attempted to come
through a ventilator into the Arena, but a trained animal like that is
worth a goodish bit of money. He let me know he was loose by giving
me his love pat when I was walking through the runway, and as Morelli

is the only one who can do anything with him I sent for her. She can
whip considerably more than her own weight in wild-cats, and there
was not the slightest danger to the audience, but not many men would
have relished her task of going into that passage with the beast loose on
top of the cages." He negatived the Press Agent's suggestion to make a
scare-head story of the escape for the papers, and suggested that they
should go up and hear Madam Morelli's account of it. She was sitting
on the edge of her bed, mending a rip which the jaguar's sharp claws
had made in her gown, and she shrugged her shoulders when the
Stranger inquired if she had been hurt.
[Illustration: Two French clowns and a performing dog.]
"It was nothing," she said laughing. "He jumped at me from the top of a
cage when I came in, but I beat him off and whipped him back into his
cage. It was only the close quarters which made it bad, for I am used to
fighting them." She was interrupted by a yapping and caterwauling in
the doorway, and sprang on the bed, her face white with terror, as a
small terrier and the menagerie cat rolled into the room in a clawing,
biting mix-up. The terrier was raising a litter of puppies in the next
room, and the cat had transformed the space back of Morelli's bed into
a feline nursery, and a meeting of the two anxious mothers in the hall
had led to trouble. Madam Morelli always goes through her
performance in an evening dress, and she stood on the bed, her long
train gathered closely about her, trembling like a leaf, when the
Proprietor finally separated the combatants and restored peace.
"You wouldn't think that a woman who had just come from a fight with
a two hundred pound jaguar, which could easily tear her to pieces,
would be scared at a scrap between a toy terrier and a mongrel cat,"
said the Proprietor, laughing, as he led the way to the café table. "But
she makes a specialty of the larger species."
"This matter of specialties seems to run through every branch of the
show business," said the Press Agent as they took their seats at the table.
"I ran a dime museum in St. Louis a few years ago--in those days there
was lots of money in it--and the freaks would never stand for any
change in their billing. We used to have a fresh lot sent on by our New

York agent every two weeks, and one Monday morning when I went
down to look over the new arrivals, I knew that he had been up against
the demon Rum, when he engaged such a tough looking bunch. The
alleged fat woman looked as if she was wasting away with
consumption, and the bearded lady had a way of absentmindedly
humming the popular airs in a bass voice which gave the whole snap
away. There was one likely looking girl and when I asked her what she
was she told me she was the web-footed lady and showed me her feet,
which had little pieces of skin growing between the toes.
"I knew that wasn't good enough, so I told her she was mistaken; that
she was a Circassian beauty, and I gave her a wig and the fixings and
put her on the platform. But say, would you believe it? She was so mad
and embarrassed by the change in her stunt that when the lecturer was
calling attention to her blond beauty, she would blush until she looked
like an Indian Princess, and every time he turned his back she would
take off her shoes and wiggle her toes at the audience to show what she
really was.
[Illustration: "Things which Nature never intended them to do."]
"It was up to us to get some real attraction to tide over the time until
our agent should get sober and send us another bunch of freaks, so
Merritt, who was my partner, and myself hunted up a big buck nigger
and made a deal with him to go on as a 'Wild Man.' We ripped up a hair
mattress and glued the contents onto him, and wired a couple of big