The Power of a Two-headed Girl to Cheer the Sad—She Is not Beautiful, but her Color Is Distinct—As a Show She Draws Better than a Scientific Lecture. The cultivated two-headed girl has visited the West. It is very rare that a town the size of Laramie experiences the rare treat of witnessing anything so enjoyable. In addition to the mental feast which such a thing affords, one goes away feeling better—feeling that life has more in it to live for, and is not after all such a vale of tears as he had at times believed it. Through the trials and disappointments of this earthly pilgrimage, the soul is at times cast down and discouraged. Man struggles against ill-fortune and unlooked-for woes, year after year, until he becomes misanthropical and soured, but when a two-headed girl comes along and he sees her it cheers him up. She speaks to his better nature in two different languages at one and the same time, and at one price. When I went to the show I felt gloomy and apprehensive. The eighteenth ballot had been taken and the bulletins seemed to have a tiresome sameness. The future of the republic was not encouraging. I felt as though, if I could get first cost for the blasted thing, I would sell it. I had also been breaking in a pair of new boots that day, and spectators had been betting wildly on the boots, while I had no backers at three o'clock in the afternoon, and had nearly decided to withdraw on the last ballot. I went to the entertainment feeling as though I should criticise it severely. The two-headed girl is not beautiful. Neither one of her, in fact, is handsome. There is quite a similarity between the two, probably because they have been in each other's society a great deal and have adopted the same ways. She is an Ethiopian by descent and natural choice being about the same complexion as Frank Miller's oil blacking, price ten cents. She was at one time a poor slave, but by her winning ways and genuine integrity and genius, she has won her way to the hearts of the American people. She has thoroughly demonstrated the fact that two heads are better than one. A good sized audience welcomed this popular favorites. When she came forward to the foot-lights and made her two-ply bow she was greeted by round after round of applause from the elite of the city. I felt pleased and gratified. The fact that a recent course of scientific lectures here was attended by from fifteen to thirty people, and the present brilliant success of the two-headed girl proved to me, beyond a doubt, that we live in an age of thought and philosophical progress. Science may be all right in its place, but does it make the world better? Does it make a permanent improvement on the minds and thoughts of the listener? Do we go away from such a lecture feeling that we have made a grand stride toward a glad emancipation from the mental thraldom of ignorance and superstition? Do people want to be assailed, year after year, with a nebular theory, and the Professor Huxley theory of natural selections and things of that nature? No! 1,000 time no! They need to be led on quietly by an appeal to their better natures. They need to witness a first-class bureau of monstrosities, such as men with heads as big as a band wagon, women with two heads, Cardiff giants, men with limbs bristling out all over them like the velvety bloom on a prickly pear. When I get a little leisure, and can attend to it, I am going to organize a grand constellation of living wonders of this kind, and make thirteen or fourteen hundred farewell tours with it, not so much to make money, but to meet a long-felt want of the American people, for something which will give a higher mental tone to the tastes of those who never lag in their tireless march toward perfection.
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