Chapter III: But We All Like It

And now for just a little confidential chat between ourselves, regarding some of the things which make us happy.

Nearly everything else in the world has changed. In the last fifty years we’ve had a topsy-turvy affair of progress and education, sophistication, and advancement. Everything has gone forward; this old globe has become a swift-moving, wiseacre thing, in which only one relic remains of a previous time:

We still like to be bunked!

Not only like it, but love it, and demand it. Not only bunked in new ways and new methods, but in the old, familiar ways as well; in fact, by the identical tricks which were in vogue in the days when Barnum hurt the feelings of our sophisticated grandparents by announcing frankly that one of their real wants was the want to be humbugged!

In fact, so far as amusement is concerned, there is practically no change in human nature as regards its desire to be flimflammed. Customs may change; moral laws grow more flexible or rigid, as the case may be; wars come and go while diplomats change the whole face of the earth; and psycho-analysts declare that the human race has gone through a crucible, to emerge a newer, different thing. But just the same, deep down in the hearts of all of us, there is one thing which remains the same, calling incessantly:

“Bunk me again; I like it!”

Understand, however, when the term “bunk” is used, bunk is meant, and not bunco. The shorter word may be a derivative of the other, but in its new form it means something vastly different from the older and more vicious expression. Bunco is reminiscent of gold bricks, green goods, sewing-machine promissory-note contracts, the selling of the Woolworth Building, the three-shell game, short change and three-card monte. Bunk is something entirely different, a more innocent manner of getting the money and at the same time pleasing the person who has done the paying. Bunco cannot be worked without arousing one certain thing in the victim,—cupidity. He believes he is going to get something for nothing, by cheating the other fellow. He ends up by being cheated himself and by racing to the police station to tell what thieves the other men were. Bunk requires also one ingredient, that of curiosity, and ends in an entirely different manner; the bunker is pleased, the bunkee is pleased, perhaps knowing all the time that his enjoyment was gained by his susceptibility to the attractions of a palpable fake. But perhaps an illustration would serve better.

In the “personal columns” of lax newspapers, one often sees such advertisements as the following:

Will some gallant gentleman take pity on the loneliness of a young,
pretty widow of 35, possessed of a fair fortune bequeathed by her
former husband? Will make wonderful wife to right man. Widow, Box 188.

Now, if you’re “the right man,” you won’t answer. In the first place, you know that no pretty widow possessed of a fortune need advertise for a husband. But if you have a strain of cupidity uppermost in your nature, you’ll see only one line in that advertisement: “possessed of a fair fortune, bequeathed by her former husband.” You can see yourself with that fortune; and you know very well that if you’re lucky enough to get that widow, it won’t be long before that fortune is in your hands. So you answer the advertisement, telling some ten or twenty lies about yourself to make an impression. Then you receive a reply!

However, it doesn’t come from the widow. It is signed by her agent, who regrets to state that there have been so many answers to the advertisement that it is impossible for the young woman to answer each one personally. However, your letter has shown such sterling qualities, that he would like to have further correspondence with you, with a view to settling the matter for the widow and arranging the marriage. You answer that letter. He answers yours. More correspondence ensues. It finally comes to a point where, if you can satisfy the agent that you are not a fortune hunter, but a good, honest young man looking for a loving wife, he is absolutely sure that the wedding is the same as settled. All that is necessary is for you to put a thousand dollars in his hands, as a guarantee of your good faith, and everything’s arranged.

The fortune is in your grasp! You get that thousand dollars some way. You are so busy thinking about the fact that you are going to cheat that widow of her fortune that you forget entirely that other cheats may be at work. You deposit the thousand dollars—and wait. And wait and wait and wait. Then you report to the police that you’ve been robbed. That’s bunco.

Bunk is something entirely different, a far more innocent game in which no one is really injured, and in which the components are curiosity, amiability, a self-hypnotism which makes the victim believe he’s happier for the bunking, and which often, through its sheer foolishness, results in amusement for every one concerned. Just as an example:

Two rival ice companies operate in a fair-sized town on one of the Great Lakes. One of them deals in artificial ice, the other in natural. And one of them—it wouldn’t be fair to state which—made the discovery that its ice was harder and lasted longer than the product of the rival firm.

The man at the head of the company was well-versed in bunk. He didn’t do the usual thing—that of advertising the hardness and long-lasting qualities of his ice in the newspapers. Instead he hired a few judicious persons to start a series of vile rumors against his own company! The product of the other ice manufacturer was far superior; it would last twice as long! Not until these rumors were well circulated did the shrewd ice manufacturer do his advertising. Then he answered the charges in a page advertisement and challenged his rival to an “ice contest.”

No one in town ever had heard of an ice contest. Neither had the promoter, for that matter, until the idea occurred to him. The plan was for each company to place a chunk of ice of the same weight in the public square, and let the sun do its worst. The ice that lasted the longest naturally would be the best.

The other company fell into the snare. The plans were made, and the town gathered to see the ice contest! Now, of all amusements that might be imagined, a race between two cakes of ice for the longevity championship belt hardly could be called the most exciting. Yet it is a matter of record that on the day of that ice race, half the town thronged the square to watch two pieces of water crystal melt slowly away, and bets were made, running as high as fifty dollars a side! More interest was created in ice during that one day than in all the previous history of the town! Naturally, the promoter’s cake came under the wire an easy winner, and the proceeds of his business jumped a hundred per cent. overnight! He might have used the usual methods forever without more than a gradual increase. But he understood the fine art of bunk, profited thereby and every one was happy,—except the rival concern.

As a matter of fact, the practise of bunk has become one of the allied arts in American promotion. Time was when only such men as P. T. Barnum practised it. To-day, however, it is a widespread affair that takes in nearly every business, every enterprise in the country. Nine out of ten fire-and-closing-out sales are bunk,—simply another manner of turning old stock which could not be sold at an ordinary sale, but which travels over the counters quickly when the buying public believes that necessity forces the owners to place it on sale. The motion-picture companies are bunk artists extraordinary, with their personal appearances, their “blurbs” in the various trade magazines, their super this and super-super that, and their inevitable romance of everything. Did you ever stop to think that nearly every one who amounts to anything in pictures is simply saturated with romance? There’s not a marriage that isn’t romantic, not a family that isn’t the happiest on earth; superlatives of a land of enchantment are everywhere in the world of the motion picture. All for one purpose: to create romantic thoughts in the minds of readers, and a desire, now that they have read romance, to see it. Whereupon they go to the pictures.

Politicians use it; you know they’re not going to keep their campaign promises when you vote. But you smile in forgiving fashion and tell yourself that it’s just part of the game. It is; part of the bunk of being a politician! The preacher who tells his congregation that the church must be abreast of the times and puts a jazz band in his church on Sunday is practising the game of bunk. The hotels which call pork and beans by a French name and double their prices for same are merely “slipping over the bunk.” Only pork and beans, it is true, but the name seems to add something to the taste, and you pay the extra price gladly. The society woman who “consents” to go into the movies,—bunk again. More, it is simply a revival of that old, old trick practised years ago on the stage until it became worn out in that field, dressed up and refurnished for a new line of endeavor. What’s more, it works! For that matter, even the railroads are not immune.

You’ve perhaps ridden from New York to Chicago on an “extra fare” train. You’ve paid eight perfectly good dollars for the privilege and lolled in your seat in the supreme satisfaction of knowing that if the train is more than fifty-five minutes late, the railroad will be forced to give you back a dollar an hour for every hour of delay. Therein lies the secret of the success of the extra fare train,—that refund. If the ordinary passenger didn’t know he was going to force the railroad into giving back part of his money, should the train be late, the popularity of paying eight dollars more for a ride between New York and Chicago might pall. Railroads are looked upon as octopi—or puses, whichever you choose. The public has paid them much money, and the public is tickled when it can make them pay some of it back. So the public rushes for the extra fare train, feeling that even should the thing be late, there’ll be a lot of satisfaction in that refund. Nor does the public stop for a moment to consider that it’s a rare, rare thing that a fast train is more than thirty minutes late, and that the railroad company can count on every cent of its extra fare money ninety-nine times out of a hundred! More, that even should the train be a full eight hours late—or even twenty hours late—what would the payee have gained over the slow train? Nothing at all, except the disappointment of believing he was going to reach a certain town eight hours ahead of another train, and failing to do it! Of course, the railroads merely classify it all as shrewd business. But a showman would call it bunk.

It even invades restaurants, this practise of the bunk. Not long ago I sat in a big New York night café which caters largely to the out-of-town trade. I had with me as a guest a man from Kansas City. The waiter approached and took the order. Then, with a furtive glance about the big room, he placed the menu card to his lips, and from its protection asked, sotto voce:

“What’ll it be to drink?”

I’d been there before,—and ordered coffee. But the eyes of the man from Kansas City glowed with the light of adventure.

“What can we get?” he asked.

“Leave it to me,” came the guarded answer from behind the menu card. The Kansas City man “left it.” Ten minutes later, the waiter returned with something in a cocktail glass,—something that looked like a Bronx, but which was merely a mixture of a dash of pepper and a conglomeration of non-alcoholic “make-believes.” The Kansas City man drank it greedily and motioned the waiter nearer.

“Do it again,” he ordered. But the glum-faced servant shook his head.

“Sorry,” he announced in the saddest of sad tones, “but we can serve only one to a patron. Supply’s pretty short, you know.”

Whereupon the Kansas City man went home, proclaiming loudly that he had been served a cocktail right out in the open at the so-and-so restaurant and that the place had protection that a battleship couldn’t break through. If the waiter had served him three or four of the things, enough to produce a well-formulated “kick,” and if the “kick” had not appeared, there might have been a different story. But the waiter didn’t; he served one ten-cent drink, told not a single lie, gave the man a thrill and charged him a dollar. With the result that every one was happy. So goeth the bunk!

Naturally, however, since the practise of bunkery originated in the outdoor show business, it is there that it thrives to its greatest extent, and there it has achieved some of its biggest victories. Once the disease has seized its victims, there is nothing that can compete against it. Art, science, business,—everything must fall before it. Just as an example, let’s go back into history for one comparison, then face the present for another. In the days of P. T. Barnum, this showman became the possessor of one Charles Stratton, a midget whose height was only thirty-one inches, and whose name he changed to “General” Tom Thumb. Then he took him to London for an exhibition in Egyptian Hall. About the same time, Robert Benjamin Haydon, one of England’s greatest painters, placed the last brush-touch upon his masterpiece, “The Banishment of Aristides,” and decided to exhibit it in another part of Egyptian Hall. It became a contest between art and bunk, between a masterpiece and a person who had no other claim to public interest than that he was not quite half as large as the ordinary human being. The title of “General” was a fake; the name of Tom Thumb was a fake. Whatever was told of his history, lineage and accomplishments was largely fakery, simply because there never was a lecture on a freak that was otherwise. But—

A week passed in the battle of the midget and the masterpiece. At the end of that time, there was an accounting in which it was found that “General” Tom Thumb had held the public interest to the extent of three thousand dollars in admissions, while the “Banishment of Aristides” had brought in exactly thirty-four dollars and sixty cents. Whereupon the painter went out and shot himself, while General Tom Thumb continued to roll in the shekels.

That, of course, was many years ago. But have times changed since then? Have they? Two years ago I was in a fair-sized city of the Middle West, and happened in on a quarrelsome meeting of a Chautauqua committee. It all resolved itself into the fact that the city council had allowed a small five-car carnival company the privilege of exhibiting in town on the same days as the Chautauqua, and while the educational entertainment was literally starving, the carnival was reaping a harvest because of the exhibition of a “pit show” containing four “pigmy cannibals” which were supposed to live on raw dog. I went to the Chautauqua. Then I went to the carnival, where the “pit show” of the “pigmy cannibals” was a thing of constant crowds. Under a new name and a new ballyhoo, the cannibals were reaping a harvest. The year before they had been the “last four survivors of the Ancient Aztec tribe.” To the show world they were what is known as “pinheads,” and a pin head is nothing more than a certain type of idiot, whose lack of development shows in stature and in the head, which is barely larger than an orange. Circus and carnival men obtain them for the most part in Mexican and half-breed settlements, paying a royalty for them to the parents instead of the customary wages. Heartless? In a manner, yes. But on the other hand it often is more humane than otherwise. They are better treated, perhaps, than in the home they left. They are well fed, well cared for and clothed in the winter, and what is most important, the very thing which takes away their earning power forms their means of livelihood! However, the fact remains that they are idiots, nothing more, not persons with undeveloped brains, but with practically no brains whatever. This accounts for the small, conical shape of their heads and their slanting features; much more room is occupied by their jaws than by their cerebrum and cerebellum. They speak no English, for the reason that they have the brain capacity to utter only a few guttural sounds. The “dog feast” was Belgian hare. So there you are!

The whole thing is that art or enlightenment or anything else hasn’t a chance against a good freak, whether it be human or a freak of achievement; once you’re in the humor for being bunked, you don’t desire any one to interfere with your enjoyment!

Therein lies one of the secrets of bunk as it is practised in the amusement world. There are others, several of them, but they all are aided and abetted by that desire, which, like the measles, or the pip, attacks the rich and poor, educated and uneducated alike. I’ve been in the show game since I was a boy of sixteen. I’m a bit old and bald now. Last year, in Chicago, I had a very important engagement. One block from my destination was a “store show” with an “exact reproduction of the assassination of the Russian Czar and his family in wax figures.” This was the first true account ever given of this mysterious, yet historical thing. The “spieler” said so. The inside lecturer, who talked through an interpreter, was Ivan Pietrovitch, one of the very members of the firing squad which had ended the life of Czar Nicholas. For the first time in history, the truth could become known!

Did I stop to think what would have happened if a member of that firing squad really had come to America,—if he could have gotten past the immigration authorities? Did I even consider the fact that his picture would have been in every paper in the country, that a half dozen syndicates would have been struggling for his story, that news-reel photographers would have put him into the movies the minute he landed, and that his true account, supplemented by photographs and documents, would have been a matter of real, live news? Did I think of it? I did not. I just wanted to be bunked about that time, so I forgot my engagement and went in!

Nor is it all done without thinking beforehand. More often it happens when the victim knows that he is paying his money to see a fake, and does it deliberately, joyously, “just to see what it will be like.” For instance, the gypsy fortune teller.

If you don’t know that a gypsy fortune teller is a fake of the first water, it’s because you’re either too superstitious to be comfortable, or just plain ignorant. But you’ve had your fortune told. You’ve gone away happy and satisfied.

At more than one fair, I have seen a couple halt before a “mitt joint” where a greasy Mexican or Syrian or anything else but a gypsy stands, dressed in dirty red calico, and announcing in broken English that she can tell your past, present and future. A moment of hesitancy. Then:

“Let’s have our fortunes told!”

“Oh, she’s just a fake.”

“I know, but she might tell us something!”

So in they go. The fortune teller asks them when they were born,—and then tells them how old they are. She then asks for a piece of money—which she keeps in addition to the fee paid—and places it upon the bunkee’s forehead.

“You will live ver’ long,” she announces. “You will be ver’ hap’. You will have three children. You will mar’ the girl you love. You will succeed in business. You will lose a lit’ mon’, but make much more back. Zat is all.”

All that for fifty cents. The other member gets the same thing. Out they go, pleased. They’re going to marry, have money, three children—

There’s the sticking point. They don’t want three children. Well, maybe that gypsy was wrong. Anyway, there’s another “mitt joint” just a few feet ahead. In they go. This time they’re going to have a family of eight! For an additional fifty cents apiece, they’ve gotten five more children! Cheap at that.

On to the next. And the next. Time and again on fair and carnival lots, I have seen persons make the rounds of absolutely every palmist, or “mitt joint,” pay from fifty cents to a dollar in each place, everywhere be told a “fortune” that was different in every detail, and go home perfectly satisfied! And because of that, I once asked one of the biggest carnival men in the country the reason.

“Plain, everyday curiosity,” came his answer. “The average person is more curious than cats. If curiosity killed human beings, as it is supposed to dispose of felines, we’d all be dead. Curiosity made Franklin fly his kite, you know. Curiosity made Newton find out why the apple hit him on the head. Curiosity sent Columbus across the ocean,—and when you sit down and figure it out, curiosity is really the thing that keeps us going. When we’re kids, we bust open the watch to see what’s inside. When we’re grown up, we listen to some bird with adenoids tell how the wild man was captured by seventeen burly sailors on the Isle of Madagascar, and then pay our money to go in and see if he’s really as vicious as the spieler says he is. And when we get a strong suspicion that the wild man is only a South Carolina negro with a wig and a false set of tusks and a bum leopard rug wrapped around him, we don’t get mad about it. We’ve found out what we’ve started to find out, haven’t we? Yep, I guess that answers the question. Curiosity.”

“For instance, I’ve seen a chump stand at a ‘set’ or crooked ‘slum spindle’ at a county fair, where every other prize is a watch and every other one a little red celluloid rose, and turn the thing three hundred and fifty times at ten cents a copy and win nothing but a red rose every time. Three hundred and fifty little red celluloid roses for thirty-five dollars. Curiosity. He wants to see if he really can win one of those watches. When he finds out he can’t, he doesn’t get sore, he’s satisfied!”

“And if you don’t believe that the human race is eaten up with curiosity, just take a slant at those two Oregon John shows. Got in a jam with one of the fellows over his contract and thought he was going to cancel. So we booked another. Then the other fellow came on. Both of ’em set up their shows on the lot, advertising the original Oregon John, and it looked kind of bad for awhile until they opened up. After that, we tied ’em both up for the whole season!”

I followed his direction and observed two “pit shows.” There I saw, beyond the black mass of “lookers” who were surrounding the ballyhoo stands, two banners, almost identical, displaying the hold-up of a train by a lone bandit and the proclamation that within the pit was the one and only and original Oregon John, the bandit.

The “bandit” incidentally, in this sort of an exhibition, consists of the half-mummified cadaver of some unfortunate that has kicked around an undertaking shop for two or three years unclaimed by any one who will pay the funeral expenses. Then along comes a showman, who buys the body and takes it out on the road, exhibiting it as the remains of Oregon John, or California Pete, or Mexican Querto, or whomever he desires. The poor cadaver cannot talk back. The bullet holes produced artificially, are shown to prove just how he died at the hands of a posse. The lecture details a list of crime that would have made Oregon John or California Pete or whoever he happens to be a first-page feature in every paper in the country for months. But that never is considered. The crowd looks, gets a good, morbid sort of thrill, a few shivers and a couple of shocks and calls it a wonderful amusement. In real life, the poor mummy may have been a Sunday-school superintendent. In death he is the worst of the worst, and the more horrible his make-believe past, the more anxious the crowd is to take a look at him. In fact, the “push” in front of the two shows which the carnival owner indicated was tremendous. The showman smiled:

“First they go into one show and look at the only and original Oregon John and listen to the lecturer announce the fact that his rival across the way is a faker, a crook and seven different kinds of a liar. Then they go out—and hurry to the show across the way, just to see what the fake looks like. There they hear the same thing,—that the other man is a faker. And I’ve seen ’em go back to the first show a second time, just to take another look so they can make up their minds about the thing. After which, they go home, and ‘a fine time was had by all.’”

So, after all, perhaps the carnival man was right. It’s curiosity which lures forth the dime, where solid business couldn’t even drag it out! Curiosity first, and then the desire to see some one else become a bunkee also. For in this latter phase lies a gold mine.

It started, as a great many other things started, in the days of P. T. Barnum. It has continued, with very little variation, ever since. I know one man who makes a living by exhibiting, year in and year out, a flock of “petrified bats.” Of course, it is a “pit show,” you go up the stairs and look down a sort of well-like arrangement where you behold a dozen or so ordinary bricks, or “brick-bats.”

Whereupon you’re mad as Hades for a moment, sheepish for five minutes more, then determined, until you have hurried out, found a friend and steered him toward the most wonderful show that he ever saw,—the “Petrified Bat.” He pays his money, and goes in, and your laugh comes when he finds he’s been fooled. So out _he_ goes to find some one else,—and the showman makes a living!

Incidentally, it may be surprising to know that the very tricks of this sort, originated by Barnum and others of his type, still are running to-day, and making money. Fifty years is a long time. In fact, when you come to consider, the world has absolutely turned over in that time. The airplane has come, electricity been developed, this, that and the other thing done, and you’d think—

But just the same, last summer, I was wandering over the lot of a small circus in a Kansas town. Aside from the side-show tent was a smaller “black top,” or tent made of black canvas, in front of which stood a talker, speaking very confidentially to the crowd before him.

“Now, I hope the ladies won’t take any offense,” he was announcing, “but what we have to show in there is for men only. It wouldn’t be wise for me to describe it out here; I know you boys don’t want me to go into details. Anyway, a word to the wise is sufficient. So, I’m not going to talk you to death, and I’m going to make my apologies to the ladies. For men only—for men only—and only twenty-five cents!”

Near me stood a man and a woman. The man hesitated, but the woman nudged him.

“Go on in,” she tempted, “and see what it is. Then you can tell me.”

Curiosity! In went Husband. Out he came, a sickly green.

“Nothing but a darned pair of suspenders!” he snorted. The woman giggled.

“That’s one on you! That’s one on you, all right. Wait ’til I tell—”

“Sh-h-h-h-h!” He had caught her arm. “Don’t tell anybody! Wait until I get hold of Tom and steer him in there! Won’t he be mad?”

Thus the endless chain was started, and several hundred persons paid their money in tribute to a trick which has existed unchanged since long before the Civil War! The “For Men Only” show, with variations, has been running now for three generations,—and there are few times that it fails.

So it goes. Away back in the last century, Barnum exhibited the “horse with his tail where his head should be.” There was nothing untruthful in it. The exhibit was a horse standing in a stall with his tail instead of his head, at the feed box. They came, they saw, then they went out and got others to come and see. That was in the 40’s. I have seen the very same trick doing a “turn-away” business within the last four months!

In fact, the list is endless. I can make an excellent pair of Siamese Twins in fifteen minutes, by the application of a double belt of rubber, made to resemble human flesh, which passes around both bodies and joins by a heavy strip, which connects the two torsos. After that, all that is necessary is to teach the “twins” to walk together, so that when one is going forward, the other is traveling backward, and to arrange the “patter”, which always begins:

“And now, my dear friends, if you will gather a bit closer, I will endeavor to explain to you the strange history of these queer people. Born on the Island of Hootchi, fifty-eight miles west of the Isle of Pataloochin, they were discovered by the king of the tribe and raised to a position which almost equaled royalty, where they were found by a roving sea captain, etc.—”

Always get the sea captain in. Why? Because of the romance of it! He travels in strange places. He sees strange things. Isn’t it natural therefore that he would be the one to bring these weird people to this country,—for your edification?

An elastic-skinned man may be manufactured by the same method, and those “strange people” are useful as well as ornamental. More than one side-show exhibit helps to “put up” and “tear down” the show, a perfectly healthy, normal human being, when he isn’t at his job of being one of “these queer people.”

For a two-headed man, all you have to do is find a person with a large wen on his forehead. There are twenty concerns that will make a mask and wig which will fit that face, in exact miniature of the man’s own physiognomy. And if you don’t care about expense, that face can be made to open and close its eyes, move its ears, move its mouth and even smoke a cigarette, simply through the application of “pull cords” such as are used for ventriloquist’s figures, and by a suction tube attached to a bulb for the smoking stunt.

In fact, for the purpose of the showman—and for the purpose of the spectator—a fake is always better than the real thing. It’s more along the lines of what the public wants. The statement sounds queer, but just the same—

Perhaps you’ve heard of “Jo-Jo, the Dog-Faced Boy?” There was a real Jo-Jo, it is true, who lived in Russia and through some freak of misfortune possessed a face which was remarkably like that of a dog. But that isn’t the Jo-Jo which lives in your memory. The one of whom you think was a fake!

He was nothing more than an English variety performer who was an adept at imitating the barking of dogs. An American showman procured somewhere a picture of the original Jo-Jo and had an expensive wig made to imitate him. Then the Englishman was dressed in the garb of a Russian peasant, and for months, in Boston, in New York, and in practically every other city of the East, thousands of persons struggled to see this “strange man with the face of a dog.”

Over in Russia, the original Jo-Jo heard of his rival and hastened for America, hoping for a fortune. Wasn’t he the real thing? He was, but that mattered little. Jo-Jo, the real Dog-Faced Boy, couldn’t bark like the faker could. Hence he drew a fair salary at a museum, but that was about all!

The list of fakery can go on, through nearly every historical freak that lives in memory. The Dahomey Giant, an account of which you can find in nearly every encyclopedia, was a bit of bunk,—merely a seven-foot negro. The “missing link” was only a hairy child. And even the first “Wild Man” was a fake, just as every wild man from Borneo, Siam, Yonkers or the Bronx, since then, has been a fake. But you’ve seen the wild man, haven’t you? So have I!

What’s more, even the genuine is often a fake. A few seasons ago, the only real, living adult gorilla ever shown in captivity toured America, and made, oh, many dollars for his owner. He was genuine. There was no doubt about it. On every side were documents to show that he was genuine; as many as ten famous blood specialists and microscopists said that he was genuine. In fact, they almost went so far as to call him the missing link and to swear that at last Darwin’s theory had been proven. Yet he was only an overgrown black-faced chimpanzee!

How simple it had been. We simply selected ten men whom we knew were not hunters of gorillas, or showmen, or students of animal life. We went to them with the chimpanzee, and we were very frank, and very, very earnest.

“Gentlemen,” we announced, “we think we’ve got a gorilla here, but we’re not sure. Nobody knows very much about gorillas, because they’re so rare. We’ve been wondering whether you could make a blood test and tell us by the corpuscles of this animal whether or not it really is a gorilla?”

They believed they could. They made the tests. Then they gave their announcement. This was a gorilla! A real, live, adult gorilla! How did they know? Simply because a gorilla is an anthropoidal ape, belonging to the same species, in a way, as a human being. The blood corpuscles nearly correspond. The corpuscles of this beast conformed more closely to those of a human being than anything else they ever had examined. Therefore, it must be a gorilla!

So, with the documentary evidence signed by ten famous men, with micro-photographic pictures of the blood corpuscles to prove it, out we went with our gorilla! And in the people came to see it; didn’t ten famous doctors who should know, proclaim it a gorilla? The fact that they had no real gorilla blood by which to make comparisons had something to do with their statements, of course. But we didn’t mention that.

Again, we received the news that a baby elephant was about to be born to one of the herd. At the head of our show was a little, Napoleonic appearing man who could have given P. T. Barnum a night-school education in shrewdness, and still left him a babe in arms. He received the news. Then he reached for the telephone.

Would a certain physician, who then was the mayor of the city, like to attend an unusual thing like the birth of a baby elephant? The physician would. And would fifteen other doctors—as he called them, one by one—be interested? Certainly. Why? Curiosity! They had brought many a human baby into the world, but never had they seen a baby elephant born. So out they went. And they stood in a line beside the baby elephant, after it had been introduced to this world, and allowed their photographs to be taken. Then—

Out to a waiting, gasping, bunk-loving amusement world went a baby elephant which had required the attendance of sixteen of the biggest doctors of the West to start it in life. One baby elephant—sixteen doctors. There were the pictures. There were the signatures:

This is to certify that I, this day, did attend at the birth of
Cutie, the baby elephant, that she was born at 8:22 A. M., and that
there is every indication that she will live to be a healthy adult
pachyderm.

Signed, this day and date.

With this evidence before them, through the admission gates there crowded some fifty thousand persons before Cutie decided to curl up her toes and die,—fifty thousand persons eager and riotous to see a baby so wonderful that sixteen famous doctors were required to bring her into the world. Nor did they stop to consider that Cutie’s mother was born without a doctor within a thousand miles of her, and that, since the world began, a million elephants more or less have entered into this life without even knowing what a doctor looked like!

Once, on a circus with which I was connected, our feature act of the side show was Prince Biji, the Wild Man from Tasmania. Prince Biji was born and lived on Clark Street in Chicago, where his tailor-made clothing was the envy of every other negro in the neighborhood. On the circus, Prince Biji dressed himself in an imitation plush leopard skin, carried a spear and shield, wore tusks, and hung about his throat a necklace of human teeth, souvenirs of his victims, killed in battle in the wilds of Tasmania. In fact, Prince Biji was an excellent feature. He looked wild. He acted wild. Within the side show, the lecturer would speak as follows:

“Now, ladies and gentlemen, we come to one of the greatest educational features of this vast collection of strange and unusual creatures,—Prince Biji, the wild man from Tasmania. Now, we make no claims for Prince Biji, such that he eats raw meat or devours serpents alive, or anything foolish like that. Prince Biji is merely here as an example of his warlike tribe, being obtained under bond from the government of Tasmania as an exhibit of the fiendish races which inhabit its strange and fearsome jungles. Now, Prince Biji can neither speak nor understand a word of English. Can you, Biji?”

Whereupon Biji would shake his head violently. He could not understand a single word of English. Perhaps it was mind reading which made him shake his head in answer to a question in English. The lecturer went on.

“You see, he cannot understand or speak a word of English. Now, Prince Biji, for your edification, will do his native sword dance, as performed in the jungles of Tasmania. Do your sword dance, Biji.”

Whereupon, Biji, not understanding a word of English, would do his sword dance and sing one of the songs of his wild and native land, a conglomeration of guttural sounds composed of whatever popped into his head. Then the lecturer would go on with his speech.

But about this time, Biji would look down into the audience. And every few days, he would see there some negro whom he either had met in his show days or around Chicago. About the time the lecturer would be repeating the fact that poor Biji had never been able to master the English tongue, Biji would beam down at his friend, and exclaim:

“Wha’, hello, Big Sly! Where yo’ been at all dis yere time?”

Big Sly would greet him effusively. The lecturer would never even glance in Biji’s direction. On he would go with his talk, while Prince Biji and Big Sly carried on an animated conversation, asked about each other’s relatives and made arrangements to meet after the show. Then Biji would straighten again, while the lecturer would draw the crowd confidentially nearer him, and announce:

“Now Prince Biji has brought with him to this country a limited number of a small, queer-shaped pod which grows in his native jungles of Tasmania, and which, upon being blessed by the savage priests of his strange and warlike tribe, are supposed to prevent forever evil spirits, illness and bad luck. As I have mentioned, he has only a limited amount of these, and as a special favor this afternoon, he has decided to allow a small number to be sold and will consent to pass these little lucky beans out among you, at the small and reasonable price of twenty-five cents, a quarter of a dollar.”

Whereupon, Prince Biji, who could not speak a single word of English, would reach immediately for an old cigar box, half-filled with hard, black affairs, such as we knew in kidhood days as “yonkypin nuts.” And the crowd would step up and buy until the supply was gone!

In which case, even curiosity cannot be saddled with the weight of the explanation. Nor can psychology, nor showmanship, nor anything else, save one fact:

We just like to be bunked!