On the Road With a Circus :: CHAPTER VI AT THE MAIN ENTRANCE

CHAPTER VI AT THE MAIN ENTRANCE

I have always regarded the two men who sell tickets with a feeling of profound awe and solemn wonder. There is something almost uncanny about their daily exhibition. Their flying hands put to shame the clutching display of the octopus. No quicker-brained, more resolute or more peculiarly gifted men are with the show. They face, undaunted and calm, twice a day, a scene of confusion, disorder and clamoring demand which would put to his heels one not fitted perfectly by nature and experience for the part. To see them working their hands with lightning rapidity, directing, advising and correcting, is to me as interesting a study as the whole passing show affords.

When the crowd begins to gather about the ticket wagon ready with the price of admission, it would make infinitely easier the work of the men inside if the sale began then. But business astuteness bids delay. The throng grows fast, fills the enclosure and swarms over the grounds. The side-show orator, meanwhile, directs his seductive eloquence at the perspiring mass and reaps a harvest. This is an advantage gained by no undue haste in distributing tickets.

While this preliminary maneuvring is very gratifying in its results to the management, the burden it accumulates upon the two anxious men in the ticket wagon grows every minute. When finally the signal to begin operations is given, they face a sea of upturned, distorted, perspiring faces, and aloft the air is peppered with hands brandishing admission money. Everybody is irrational, unreasonable and excited. Children cry, women are on the verge of collapse, and men push and strain and mutter strange oaths. Uniformed employees strive in vain to maintain order. The wheels of the red wagon have been buried to the hubs, or it would be swept away in the rush. The mad, violent struggle continues for an hour, and thousands force their path or are carried bodily to the window and labor away with the cherished strips of printed pasteboard. A mountain of bills and coin grows and is toppled into baskets at their side. Soon these are filled and money litters the floor. There is no chance to assort or collect it now. With eyes fixed steadily before them, fingers and hands never lingering or sluggish, but intercepting a counterfeit offering like a flash, they work as if human automatons. Not until solitary arrivals denote the end of the rush do they relax. Thousands of dollars have changed hands in the brief period, yet the scene will be duplicated a few hours hence and the day will record a balance as correct in detail as the most exacting banking institution’s.

There is a popular misapprehension about the moral purposes of the men in the ticket wagon. The impression seems to prevail among many sensible persons that they are modern highwaymen, lurking there for prey. An intimate knowledge of their character and conduct makes a definite denial only fair to them. In the swift shuffle of money, there is no intention on their part to take advantage of the circus’s patron. It is the fixed design of the management to inspire a feeling of security and confidence, and the selection of ticket-sellers has this end in view. Dismissal and possible criminal prosecution would be the penalty of detected “short change” or other swindling methods.

There is only one legitimate source of outside profit, and that is furnished by the “walkaway,” circus vernacular for the person who unconsciously leaves his change behind. He is legion, strangely enough, and more remarkable still, it seldom seems to occur to him to return for his own. When he does it is promptly given him. Ticket-sellers insist vehemently that the “walkaway’s” contribution is not more than enough to reimburse them for mistakes in count which are unavoidable in the tumult, and more frequently than not to the benefit of the purchaser. Whether their comrades accept this assertion without reservation is not a subject to be discussed here.

Rates of admission are conspicuous everywhere. Children under two and a half years of age are admitted free; from that age to ten a half-ticket is required, and older persons must pay full charge. Wonderful and varied are the devices resorted to in the effort to evade legitimate payment. Children who at home are in their teens have dwarfed to babyhood at the circus entrance. Parents glibly insist that robust offsprings are under nine years, and panting fathers and mothers present themselves, in the palpable attempt to deceive, with an armful of boy or girl who has reached the full-rate limit. Watchful and inexorable door-keepers receive them, demand and finally are handed the correct sum, and composedly hear themselves styled “a pack of villains and swindlers.” Ill-grace characterizes those who would cheat the circus.

To the main entrance come the hundreds of written orders for tickets, issued by the advance agents who have covered the district with bills and posters. As a precautionary measure against imposition, two sets of keen-eyed employees have subsequently prowled over the routes and made note when storekeeper or householder has not kept faith. If the flaring advertisement has been removed, disfigured, or hidden under that of a rival show, a memorandum is made. Thus a list of those who are and who are not entitled to recognition is in the hands of the management when the doors open. Each claim presented to the ticket taker has a corresponding number on the large sheet of paper which the general manager holds, and whether or not the holder enters free depends on its report. Very crestfallen and embarrassed, generally, is the man who thought he could profit without rendering service in return. He had not calculated on the thorough business system with which he was in contact. If the applicant has kept his promise he is welcomed to the show, given what his order calls for in the way of seats and number of admissions, and passes inside.

Each one of the men at the main entrance understands his manifold duties perfectly and there is no confusion. Annoying problems enough present themselves, but the quick-witted, ready circus man solves them without hesitation. Complaints innumerable flow to the main entrance, but everybody receives a fair hearing and just treatment in so far as human effort can bring it about. Fault-finding women are the bane. There is almost no extreme of compromise to which the showman will not go to rid himself of the presence of a member of the other sex when she is wrought up over a conviction that she has been imposed upon. She blocks the passage way, gesticulating madly, protesting volubly and threatening all manner of things. She is generally tall and angular, wears spectacles, carries a cotton umbrella, has a crying child by the hand and is famous in the town as a virago. Dutch and Curley cower before her outburst, and the general manager promises her all she demands if she will only pass on. With a parting volley of abuse she flaunts into the menagerie tent and a feeling of great relief pervades all. Her reappearance, with a lament about the unsatisfactory locality of her seat, may be confidently expected later.

BEFORE THE CROWD COMES.

Vigilant canvasmen picket the stretches of cloth, alert lest the small boy or his older relative crawl under the fabric and gain free admission. The duty is one demanding keen eye and active body, for once the canvas folds after the invader he is generally secure from capture; a scamper under the low rows of seats or into the crowd eludes successful pursuit and recognition. So watchful, however, are these patrolmen and so obdurate against pleading juvenile persuasion that surreptitious entrance is effectually barred. The circus-fascinated but impecunious youngster must needs vicariously satisfy his longing by turning handsprings outside the barrier. The stirring band music carried to his ears conjures immeasurable pleasures in his mind and is madly irritating.

The press agent receives his newspaper guests at the main entrance. They have been provided with tickets bearing his name. To the reporter assigned to write up the circus and to the responsible heads of the newspaper he gives slips of paper passing them into an enclosure from which is afforded an undisturbed survey of all that is transpiring, and brings to closer view the excelling features of the performance. Later he joins them there, explains the show’s superiority over all competitors and is generally entertaining. He presses peanuts and lemonade upon them and sends them away in friendly mood.

That manly young fellow who appeared from the inner recesses of the festive tent for a whispered conversation at the main entrance with the general manager is Fred Ledgett, equestrian. He is one of the principals in the season’s romance of the circus. Dallie Julian, eighteen years old, who turns back somersaults from the broad, rosined haunch of her horse Gypsy, is the other party to the charming affair. What they dared and suffered before they could win the countenance and support of management and relative and carry out their matrimonial longing, only those who know intimately the prosaic circus institute can appreciate. If there is one thing frowned upon more than all others in tented life, it is adventures of the heart. But Fred and Dallie emerged triumphant and conquering, and the seed of love sown in April came to golden harvest in Iowa, many miles transplanted, where an earnest, curious company of show people witnessed the wedding ceremony and participated in the celebration.

My mind reverts to the early spring when little Dallie, done up in a heavy coat and sitting on one of the tubs which served as a seat for a trick elephant, was holding an informal reception in Madison Square Garden. Preparations for the opening of the circus were in full swing—literally in some instances—for the acrobats, practising for the first time in a new place, were suspended by “mecaniques”—the leather belts with rope attachments that made living pendulums of them when they missed their try. Even one of the bareback riders, forming a pyramid on her husband’s shoulders, while he went around the ring on three horses, had the life-saving apparatus around her waist. For she was new at the business and her husband was not letting her take any more chances than he could help. And while father and mother were doing their great aerial act on horseback, both of them looking as though only boy and girl, their two-year-old baby cooed down at the ringside, brought over from Boston to spend three weeks with them. She thought it was fine when her mother jumped and balanced, but her mother thought of nothing except not to fall off and not to hang her husband with the rope that was her safeguard. They were in the middle ring and beside it, swathed in top coats and wrappings of all kinds, were performers waiting for their turns to go in. From beneath their street clothes came glimpses of pink and white fleshings with slippers to match, and over the slippers were clogs, wooden-soled shoes, with leather tops, to prevent their feet from being injured while walking in the ring.

The circus was getting ready to open and everybody was practising to start in a blaze of glory. In one of the end rings a woman was riding bareback, “the best hurdle jumper in the business” said one of the men. It looks easy to run and jump on a horse, but it requires work and practice. Not being a dress rehearsal, every one was in working togs, and the women were wearing bloomer suits, with waists of red, pink and blue, and with that innate sense of decoration that is part of the true artist in the ring, each wore a rosette in her hair that matched the suit.

Dallie’s interest was centred on the ring where her aunt, who is also her foster mother, was breaking in a new horse.

“Many of the people use the company’s horses, but my aunt has her own and so have I,” she explained. “She always breaks them herself and this one is new to the business; that is why there is a rope on him and the ringmaster hangs to it. You see the horse might get frightened and bolt over the side or try to go through the doorway,” pointing to a niche that served as an entrance; “there is a man standing at the door to prevent the horse from going out.”

The horse was perfectly well aware of the fact and not altogether reconciled, although he was fast approaching that state. Ropes swinging from all sorts of corners where trapezes and “looping-the-loop” contrivances were being put up disconcerted him, but the rope and whip were arguments that appealed in inducing him to stay.

“He will be all right before the performance,” Dallie went on with the air of a connoisseur. “There will be two more rehearsals to-day and some chance to practise to-morrow. I am riding the same horse I ride always,” she went on, tucking her small feet out of the way of dirt and draught, “and it is lucky for me because I have only been practising two weeks this season. You see I was in the hospital last winter, and all I got of the circus was hearing the band play as I lay in bed while all the others were getting ready for this season. But I practised a lot this year and now I do better than I did last year.”

In the upper ring the Rough Riders were putting their horses through their acts and the horses were not altogether pleased. The thing they hated most was being made to lie down when they did not feel the least bit tired, and many of them were inclined to argue the matter until the whip convinced them that really they preferred to do what was wanted. The whip as a convincer in a circus is a great ethical force. At one end of the course were the acrobats doing a complete double shoulder twist. They were swinging by ropes attached to their belts when they missed a leap.

“You see,” said Dallie, shedding the great white light of information, “they have never done their turn here before and they are used to a smaller place, so they are practising to get distances. If one of them should miss and fall it would hurt, for they haven’t any net under, but the ‘mecanique’ will keep them swinging clear from the ground. You ought to see the ‘mecanique’ in the rings of the winter quarters. They are put on people just learning to go bareback. Sometimes they miss a horse and the persons go swinging round and round the ring until they land on their horses again. It is awfully funny. Some of the people are scared this season because they are new and there are a lot of new horses and so they are nervous. My aunt told me the other day she could not sleep nights for worrying about me and how I would get through, but I told her she was silly. I will get through all right and there is no use any way in worrying, even if anything does happen.”

“And isn’t it remarkable that some persons do not get hurt?” she went on. “Now, here are all of us and there hasn’t a thing gone wrong to hurt any one. Why, yesterday one of the walking tight wires broke when there were five people on it. There was not one of them hurt; but a little boy that was on the end had every one fall on him and it scared him pretty bad and bruised him a little, but he is practising to-day as usual.”

Her aunt’s horse by dint of much persuasion was taking some baby hurdles while the aunt hung on behind clinging to a strap, for the horse did not seem to care about having a person perched on his haunches, but he accepted it for the same reason that he had all the rest. But at last he was led from the ring and some one called “Dallie!” She jumped down from her tub, dropped off her long skirt, danced into the ring and up to a big white horse. She wore a short skirt over her dark bloomers and in her hand was a very weather-beaten little whip.

“I have tried a lot of others,” she said, as she bent it, “but I cannot turn somersaults with any other. I am so used to this and the way it feels in my hand that I cannot get along with any other. I have lost this several times but some of the men always find it and bring it back to me.”

Her horse, with its tightly checked head, waited for her and she felt the head strap with the air of an old professional.

Dallie stood up like a bit of thistle-down and, poised lightly on her horse, went riding around. First one of her feet and then the other went forward to balance, and then suddenly both went tight together and she took several preliminary leaps in the air to get herself limber. Having stretched her muscles, she gave a little cry. Three men, lined up together to catch her if she fell, got ready, and up and over in the air she went like a little human ball. The first time she did not land on the horse but in the ring. But after that she did her turn all right and was driven out to make room for others needing practice.

Cupid had picked the little horsewoman out for his mark in these early days of the circus, but so closely guarded was the secret that it was days before we knew that her heart had taken up its lodging in young Ledgett’s breast, and his breast had become the cabinet of her affections. Shy glances and low and tender voices in secluded spots finally told a revealing tale and we watched the progress of the devotion with intense interest and some concern. We knew the stern traditional circus antipathy toward affairs of the kind and wondered whether the fixed opposition of the aunt could be overcome. No comrade was so disloyal and unchivalrous as to carry the story to those in authority, but soon the love-making conveyed itself to their very eyes. Then began a systematic effort to end it abruptly, and the memory of the courage and faith and hope which forced surrender to Hymen’s cause will linger with us long.

The burden of obstructions was directed at the girl—he was too strong and self-reliant; and when her aunt was not advising against her conjugal plans, the ringmaster engaged himself in telling that marriage would jeopardize her future. So it was that between the prodigious shakings of the head and the love that absorbed her, Dallie grew thin and pale and unsteady in her work. Her judge of distance, so necessary in her dangerous aerial revolutions, became bad, and often she alighted on wooden ringbark or horse’s head or tail when her feet should have been fixed to Gypsy’s moving back. She became a bruised and humble maiden, but with purpose unwavering. Her aunt’s vigilance was unrelaxing and unrelenting; she vowed that the two should not have each other’s company.

To the casual circus goer, this determined disapproval of innocent attachment may seem brutal and unreasonable, but there are reasons underlying which those directly involved feel justify their course. It is the history of circus love affairs which progress during the active season that they impair performances. Once the yearning enters show persons, indolence and indifference characterize them in the ring. It is not a desire to oppress, but a warning instinct of professional deterioration, that causes sardonic smiles and harsh flings. To the relative who has acted as mother for years, the prospect of premature separation is naturally obnoxious.

It was not until summer was on the wane that we saw signs of approaching capitulation. Dallie had risen supreme over her temporary weakness and was again the skilful mistress of the ring. Fred, patient and artful, had won first an enduring place in the aunt’s esteem and then her permission and encouragement. The management yielded before their combined eloquence.

So it was that one Sunday afternoon, Dallie, swaying under a great breadth of silk, and her sweetheart, awkward in encumbering black, but looking very proud and joyful, started hand in hand down the long road of life. A very glorious supper was served that evening in honor of the event. The owner gracefully proposed the health of the bride, and the tent resounded with the enthusiasm of the response. Fred expressed his thanks in well-put words, and Mrs. Fred blushed prettily in her happiness. And best of all, about the corners of the aunt’s lip there rested a smile of pleasure, of approval and of contentment.

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