Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 41, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 January 1909 — THE OLD CIRCUS MAN'S STORY [ARTICLE]

THE OLD CIRCUS MAN'S STORY

How the Great Giant’s Singing Voice Hit the People

“A very curious thing about the greatest of all giants,” said the old circus man, “was the difference between his speaking and his singing voice. “His speaking voice was that Cf a man of ordinary stature; his singing voice was In keeping with his own gigantic size. And we never discovered this ourselves until he had been with us for some months, not in fact till the end of the first season with us, when we’d gone into winter quarters. “We were sitting, the old man, the giant and myself, in that room that I’ve told you about that we had fixed up for the giant by taking out a sec-ond-story floor and so carrying a ground floor room up through two stories to give the giant head room—sitting tfiere one evening about a couple of days after we’d come in from the road, and pretty soon we heard the cook, over in the kitchen at the other end of the house, humming a tune; and then the first thing we knew we heard the giant singing it. And singing? Why, you never heard anything like It; and nobody would have believed, If he hadn’t heard It, that anybody could have such a voice. “For comparison it was like the roar of Niagara compared to the sound of a little waterfall over a stone in a brook. Sound? Why, I thought it was going to make the walls bulge and blow out the windows. And it wasn’t a harsh, rough voice, you understand, either; it was a good, smooth voice; not the most beautiful voice you ever heard, ** but still a smooth, round, deep voice of the most amazing volume, vastly greater than anything you had ever dreamed of In a human voice, and It made the old man and me sit up In wonder. “And when the giant stopped we found the whole circus was standing around outside the headquarters building—animal men, canvas men, drivers, the whole outfit had come up to hear the giant sing, and these were men, you know, accustomed to strange things. We had 80-odd acres in our reservation, but you could hear the giant’s voice in the furthest corner of It, and I didn’t know then.how much further beyond; and at the first note of it men had stopped their work and then they had all come to listen. “As I was saying to you, you could hear the giant’s voice all over the reservation, and I didh’t know how far beyond; but we soon found out about that. The village was only about three-quarters of a mile away, and on still nights and when the wind was right you could hear his singing then plainly; and it didn’t exactly scare the people; t»ey all knew the giant and they all liked him, fcut they all went to bed early, and that wonderful sound coming to them after they had gone to bed did disturb ’em somewhat. And so the old man got the giant not to sing after pine o’clock at night; and that winter he had him practice up on a nudiber of songs, which of course he was going to have the giant sing under canvas in our next season on the road.

“In those days, you know, we used to give a concert after the show; send around men before the last act selling tickets for this concert; and then when ,the show was over people that hadn’t bought tickets would pass out, and those that had would stay to the concertj and sometimes half the people would stay, or maybe only a quarter of ’em; but whatever we got that way was velvet, and what the old man was going to do was to substitute for the music and slngipg we used to give In that concert singing by the giant. And he didn’t miscalculate, for the first thne the giant sang everybody stayed from curiosity, and after that they all stayed, everywhere, because they wanted to. “We used to stand the giant up on a platform built around the center pole, with the band around him, where there was plenty of room for him and where everybody <ft)uid see him. And the band would play a tune through, and then a flourish or two, and then the giant would sing, with the band accompanying him. “And he’d get the people from the first note. It was a wonder just to see him standing there, but it was a far greater wonder to hear him sing. He didn’t make fun of it, you understand; he took his singing seriously, and so did the people, for so tremendous a voice had never been heard before, but it was not unmusical, and altogether it came pretty close to being awe-inspir-ing. “You see, the giant was by far the greatest man ever seen, but his voice was far greater still. Great as he was, the giant was yet a man like ourselves, in human form, but hla voice seemed something more than human, and it ia an Interesting fact that In all the concerts the great giant gave he was never once encored. People were drawn as by a fascination to hear him sing, we played to capacity from the beginning, there never were before or since such concerts, but there was something about this colossal, stupendous, reverberating voice that, as I said, was more than human; and while it didn’t exactly scare ’em, any more than it did those folks living out there by our winter quarters, yet one song was all they wanted. “And it sure was wonderful. As 1 look back at the great giant, great as he actually was, he looms up to me now greater than ever; he was a wonder In many ways, but I guess the most wonderful thing of all about him was his singing voice.**