Judge — August 5, 1882 — page 10: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

A SLIGHT IMPEDIMENT. but he was just about to do so when the boat ran ona stump and compelted a “He nerer told his lore”. An Inside View. BY Gi 4. MANSON, ‘Tue veteran circus proprietor—a tall, stout man—shifted slightly in his seat, benevolently | allowing his big diamond pin to shed its bril- liant rays on my bald head, ad faintly expressed to him the pain T ing so much promised on the show- and so little performed in the inside of ‘This is the sentence that particularly struck me “The ferocious beasts will be seen surging | up and down their iron and steel-clad cages, lashing their sinuous sides with their flexible tails, and gazing with blood-thirsty eyes upon the assembled multitude.” “Why, my dear major,” said the cireus pro- prictor, “surely you have not grown bald in vain. It cannot be that you hav ught so much white dust on your journey down the roadway of life as is shown by the gray haii ave, without, at the same time, having acquired a knowledge of this important truth | —that we must feed the imagination.” * You mean. “1 mean we must alldo that. The reader, for instance, peruses one of your mirthful He laughs—not, my dear boy, use it isfunny. You know it is not funn, but he laughs—why? Because she imagines it is fanny. He reads it in a funny paper, edited by fanny men, illustrated by funny published. by a funny publisher, and so he says to himself, is is funny,’ and he laughs.” hank——" “You need not thank me atall, We are talking together as between man and manson, and Tam giving you an inside view of my Dp you morceanr. bee ession.” “ Bat——" “But you say that there were no ferocious beasts. I know that; yet the crowd think that they are ferocious. ‘They—the crowd, not the beasts—have entered the tent with imagina- | tions all aflame from a sight of the colored | show-bills, and the glowing announcements of | the attractions printed thereon, They don’t notice that the tiger is toothless; they fail to observe the fact that the leopard is dying of old "id age. And—" | “And T mean to say that the power of the imagination is so great in the human mind, that though our lion lost his tail by the slam- ming to of a cage door—this was in 1810— to them he appears to be a taillasher of the most approved pattern.” “ When—" “Yes, and as you would comes to blood-thirsty eyes, why we have none here. Take the jackal, for instance. We bought him during the war of 1812, A milder, more inoffensive creature does not exist. You see imagination and the show- bills tell the audience that we feed him on, say, a hundred pounds of raw meat a di ing, of course, more or less. Why, major, he eats bread and milk. His teeth are gone; he at meat. And then, too, the bleating in which he indulges, so suggestive of the ery of acalf comes to the ear, throngh the power, mind of the imagination, as the age beast rushing wildly through the dense, impenctrable forests of his native country in eager pursuit of the prey that so easily falls an unhappy victim to his prowes “The , “The elephant, you would say, is small, sober and senile; you conld carry him home in a bushel basket. ‘True—very true to the imagination. I teil you, major, im- agination is the > wand of the mind—it changes everything with which it comes in contact. Touch with it the tiger's half-blind eyes, and they become flaming orbs of un- governed passion, wild with the wildness of ferocious desire. Let it rest on the elephant, and he becomes a monster twice the size of Jumbo, Let it be thrust into our happy-fam- ily cage, and the one-eyed cat, the consumptive monkey, and the spaniel with three teeth, forthwith converted into a multitude of ani- mals from all parts of the world, living in that peace and unity which should characterize that relation brought about by the blending of | loving hearts which we call the domesti “There —' say, When it vs] bat not “There are people, you would say, who do these things in the electric light of that most powerful qualification, Ah, major, the world is full of ingrates. ‘There are those who will never be satisfied, no matter how much you do for them, An instance in point. You noticed that large picture at the side- show tent when you came in?” “Well, no matter. Don’t talk ai/ the time, You noticed it; that is sufficient. It repre- sents a man in aden of serpents. Well, in the show we have only a few common snakes in a starch-box, with a glass over the top, Do you know, sir, that a man—rather, and 1 blush to say it,a being with the form of a man—had the impudence to come to me and complain that the show was nothing like the ture on the outside !” “You must—" “*T must have done exactly what I did do. I was fairly beside myself with righteous and holy astonishment. I gave that man a look that he will never forget to his dying —a look that told of pity for his ignorance, scorn for his opinion, sorrow for his want of that essential element of which Ihave been speaking, and without which no man should ever enter acircus, I gave him this expres- sive look, and I said: “In the name of goodness, preciou alive, what do age man you want?) There sou have elegant oil painting on the outside—a work of rt in itself, worth three times the price of admission, and yet you are not satis. fied. 1 tell you, sir'—and I looked him firmly in the eye as I uttered these words of truth—*I tell you, sir, the fault lies with you. There was the material—the pictur with which to fire your imagination. You did not see it. Had you done so, you would have seen a hundred snakes, Had you taken four drinks at Smith's Hotel, you would have seen twice that number,’” un Such— “Just as you would say, reasonable creatures would ¢ lemons instead of tartaric acid in our lew ade; sugar, instead of glucose, and make us carry around live birds and the other smaller animals, when stuffed ones stuck on sticks are just as good, and a great deal safer and handier to carry.” “The delight" “Yes, I say, as you would say, the chief delight of a country circus lies in the imagina- tion—in fact, in your mind.” major, such un pect us to use Lapies, when being courted, ought not to object to the moderate use of tobacco, They should recollect that where there is a “ flame” there must be some smoke. Doctors’ char Their patients. WE regret to learn that a lady, while stoop- ing over her sewing-machine the other day, suddenly got a most painful stitch in the sid Wno runs may read, says the proverb. 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