Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 107, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 May 1914 — Side Show Sidelights Diverting Chronicles of Circus Life [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Side Show Sidelights Diverting Chronicles of Circus Life

By FRANCIS METCALFE

TT XT -Bl— .V iT T. t IT W -W 1 lr (Copyright by W. G. Chapman)

MAKING A STAR LION. •'You were not in this part of the country when New York was in an uproar for two days over the escape of one of my lions,” said the propri.etor to the stranger, as they joined the press agent “I suppose that 90 per cent, of the people who remember it think that it was all a fake, but I can assure you that I put in the most strenuous 48 hours of my career while he was loose, and it pretty nearly decided me to give up the show business. It was my first experience at running an independent show, and after great persuasion I had induced my father to let me bring some boxing kangaroos, two young lions, and Wallace, a fine big brute about fifteen years old, from our English establishment to the States. Wallace was already a famous —or infamous—lion In England, where he had the score of three trainers to his credit He had received the name of ‘The Mankiller* over there, and they were rather relieved to have me get him out of the country. “His last victim was a Frenchman, one of the best-known trainers in the business, and he went into the cage to subdue Wallace on a wager. He won, and a remarkable performance it was, but I won’t take the time to tell you about that now. He made just one little mistake; his vanity got the better of him when he turned his back on the lion to bow to the audience after remaining in the cage for ten minutes. As I said, he won the bet, and it about paid the funeral expenses of what was left of him. After that the only man who could go near Wallace was a half-breed American Indian from up near Cape Cod; Broncho Boccacio, he called himself. I don’t know what the other half of him was, and I don’t remember how he happened to be with our English show, but all sorts of conditions of men drift into the animal training business. At any rate, he was the only man who could do anything with Wallace, and that wasn’t much. He would get into the cage, and chase him around a bit, and then jump out quick —always backward after seeing what happened to the Frenchman. I brought him along to take special charge of the brute. It took a couple

of days to get the animals through the customs, and in the meantime I cast about for quarters and finally rented a stable on Eighteenth street to keep them in until I should secure an engagement’’ He took a pencil from his pocket and drew a plan on the white table top. "The stable was arranged in this way; here in the front was the carriage house with these narrow stairs at the side leading up to the loft. On each side of the door was a window facing on the street, and back of the carriage room was the stable proper —two stalls and a loose-box. On one side of the stable was a saloon and on the ocher a carpenter shop, so I didn’t expect much complaint from my neighbors, as my men patronized one, while I ordered the carpenter to build a traveling cage for Wallace which would slide on wheels, as our English' cages were too heavy to handle in a country where labor Is as high as It is here. I moved the lions up to the stable to let them rest a bit after the voyage and started to look for an engagement. It was a hard row to hoe, as I was not known in this country, and the best I could do was a booking at a dime museum for * month, and I had to take a lowlsh price at that, but I ordered a big ninesheet poster, and trusted to luck to make more out of them later. "The lions were In three cages In the stable, and in one of the stalls I had a trotting horse which had been purchased for my brother in England, and which I kept there until 1 should have an opportunity to ship it to the other side. The kangaroos I: '.were in the loft, and a couple of days after they were all settled my little girls came over from the hotel with j |»e one morning and went up there with the nurse to play with them . While I went into the carpenter shop next door to settle for the new cage, which had just been delivered. Bron-

cho, as soon as he struck hiS hative soil, had discovered a camp of other Indians on the Bowery and spent most of his time in their encampment, leaving a ‘ Cockney Englishman in charge of the lions and the horse. I intended to wait until he arrived before shifting Wallace to the new cage, but the Englishman thought he would show his cleverness and attempted to do it alone without waiting for us. He threw a piece of meat into the pew cage and then rolled it up to the old one, and when the doors were opposite each other he opened them. Of course Wallace made a spring for the meat in the nW cage, but he struck the edge of the door, and as the Cockney had neglected to block the wheels, the cage rolled away and the keeper gave a yell and bolted for the stairs. There was a loose lion downstairs —and a bad one at that —and the nurse and two children in the loft. “The first I knew of it was from the nurse, who grabbed the children and stood with them in the door which had been used to pass the hay in, yelling ‘Fire!’ and ‘Murder!’ but I knew that there was the deuce to pay as soon as I reached the street, by the sound which came from the stable.- We got a ladder from the carpenter shop and hustled the nurse and children down to the street, and then I went up to the loft, while the nurse and the Cockney held the small door from the stable to the street, which could not be fastened from the outside until the carpenter spiked some plank over it. “A look into the stable convinced me that I did not want to go down the stairs, for with one blow Wallace had converted a thousand-dollar trotting horse into two dollars’ worth of lion meat, and he was crouched on the body, which he had dragged from the stall, clawing at its throat and drinking the blood. The place looked like a shamble, and the growls’which came from Wallace as the other lions threw themselves against the bars of their cages In their efforts to get out and join in the feast were redoubled when he caught sight of my head through the trapdoor. I slammed it down and drew the kangaroo cage on top of it and then went down to the street to see that the windows and doors were securely boarded up. A great crowd was gathering, and I was afraid that

the police would shoot the brute, for I saw the possibilities of an advertisement which would more than pay for the expensive meal which Wallace was making from the trotting horse. “Just as I reached the street Broncho strolled up. He came to me and laughed at the idea of danger, and offered to go into the stable and put Wallace back in the cage. I knew that it would be impossible until the lion had gorged himself on horse meat, and now that the damage was done I was in no hurry to allay the excitement until the police and the crowd arrived. We didn’t have to wait long, for the crowd had grown until the street was blocked, and, of course, they asked more than a thousand questions. When I had worked the sensation up pretty well I consented to let Broncho take his training rod and go down, and I went with him carrying a club and a pitchfork. Things commenced to happen right away, for Wallace didn’t wait for the call of time, but sailed right into us, and when I saw that he was getting the better of Broncho I made a bluff at going back to the carcass of the horse. Wallace bounded back to protect it and crouched on it, snarling viciously, but the delay gave me a chance to help Broncho up the stairway. There was not enough of his trousers left to wad a gun, and while I was bandaging up a deep claw wound In hl* thigh that advertisement seemed less Important to me, and I would have given a geod deal to have had Wallace safely behind the bars of his cage again. He was contracted for four weeks anyway, and it takes a pretty big sensation to be remembered for more than 30 days In New York. "At sunset Wallace still held the fort, and the streets were blocked in all directions. The boards over the windows made the interior of the stable so dark that no one could see into it, but the roars which came from.

it gave the spectators all the thrills they were entitled to and caused a stampede every few minutes. We tried to drive Wallace into the cage with a stream of water from the fire plug, but he only shook his head. “I knew that Wallace would fight for his ‘kill’ as long as any of the meat was left, so we rigged up a tackle to try and draw the carcass out. We were all ready at daylight, and the crowd was bigger than ever. Say, if you want to count the idle people in New York just get up a free show at any hour of the day or night; and they will all come. There must have been over a thousand loafers about the street all night We were just getting ready to make a try for the horse when the idlers outside gave a cheer, and I saw an express wagon loaded with nets and ropes and all sorts of animal catching stuff drive up. Tony Hamilton, Barnum’s press agent, had caught on to the possibilities of an advertisement, and sent to the winter quarters at Bridgeport for some of their animal men to come down and capture a loose lion. They supposed it was in Central park, and when they found it was in a stable, the job looked eapy to them. One of them, a man named McDonald, had been with our English show, and when he heard that it was Wallace they were to tackle his ehthusiasm seeineff to melt He told the others a few anecdotes of the lion, and two of them went to find Cockney, I guess, for we never saw them again. “We managed to tnrow a slip noose around the carcass from the stairs, and when we passed the end of the rope out of the window there must have been 500 men pulling on it from the way that horse’s body slid across the floor. The four of us stood around the trap-door to beat Wallace back, and when he realized that he was losing his prey he kept us busy.

"Say, a dead horse seems to have more legs than a centipede when you try to drag it through a narrow space, and they stick out in different directions. Of course, this one stuck, and then there was more trouble, for when I took an ax to dismember it, a cop threatened to arrest me for cutting up a horse in the city limits. It took three hours to satisfy the red : tape requirements and get a permit from-the board of health, and then I had a long, sickening job, for we had to haul up what was left of the poor beast In fragments, and all the time Wallace was snapping at them or rushing at us. We gave him several nasty cracks over the snout, the only place where a lion seems to be sensitive to pain, but it only made him uglier than ever, and I knew that there was a pretty fight ahead of us, for the police were getting impatient, and I knew they would shoot. Him if we did not get him caged before night. “We drew lots to see who should be the first to go down, and I think that McDonald stacked the straws, for Broncho won—or lost —I was second, the other Barnum man third and McDonald last; but we made good after we got down there, and it was what you might have called a ‘crowded hour.’ If Wallace hadn’t been full of horse meat, which made him a trifle slow, I think he would have chased the bunch of us out, and as it was he gave us all we wanted to do. We used training rods and whips, and I learned afterward that the crowd outside thought we were being torn to pieces, but we finally conquered and it was a singed and battered lion which jumped back into the den and gave me a chance to slam the door. The noise of the clicking lock sounded good to me, and I went up the stairs with a lighter heart, in spite of tattered clothes and a scratched hand and bruised body. I knew that I had a small fortune in the beast, but I nearly cried when I went, into the case to freshen up, and the first thing I saw was the poster with the announcement that Wallace would be shown at the dime museum. I knew that it would make the onlookers suspect that it was all a fake and prearranged. The manager was afraid that I would reneg on my contract after all the free advertising, but he didn’t know me.

“Sure enough, the reporters came for me in a body while I was still tired and dirty from the fight and worn out with anxiety and loss of sleep. They accused me of having put up a job on them, but I guess the sight of my condition convinced them of my sincerity, for only one paper ever hinted at any crookedness, and that proved the best advertisement in the whole business.

“It was the Sun which came out in an article about Wallace, saying that he was toothless and decrepit from old age, and that there had never been the slightest danger from him. If the reporter who wrote it had gone into the stable with us, I don’t think he would have written the article. I did my own announcing in those days and I always started off with the announcement, ‘Ladies and gentlemen! If you see it in the Sun, it’s so, and the Sun says that Wallace is played out and toothless from old age.’ Then I would make w move to the front of the cage, and Wallace, who had a special hatred for me, would spring at the bars and show as pretty a set of fangs as you would wish' to see, and I was always sure of a laugh. “Well, I showed Wallace in New York and other cities for 30 straight weeks, and got back the value of that trotter a good many times over,” continued the proprietor as he rose from the table. "His name is one jure with, even yet, and nearly every lion which is exhibited in the side shows at the county fairs is billed as ‘Wallace, the Untamable!’ The original Wallace is still alive and at our English breeding establishment” He said good night and left the table.

WALLACE BOUNDED BACK TO PROTECT IT, AND CROUCHED ON IT, SNARLING VICIOUSLY.