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Updated: June 25, 2025
I meant to go into the side-shows and see the fat woman and the living skeleton, and take the giant by the hand and the armless man by his friendly foot, if I might be so honored. But I did none of these things, and I am willing to believe the fault was in me, if I was disappointed in the circus. It was I who had shrunk and dwindled, and not it.
It was a wonderful liturgy, as grotesque as it was beautiful like an old cathedral in all styles of architecture, stored with shabby antiquities and side-shows and overgrown with moss and lichen a heterogeneous blend of historical strata of all periods, in which gems of poetry and pathos and spiritual fervor glittered and pitiful records of ancient persecution lay petrified.
Pompton ushered his charges through the entrance, and they found themselves in what seemed like a wilderness of tents, both large and small. As it was not yet time for the performance, they walked round, visiting the side-shows, and looking at the collection of "freaks," which is considered an important part of every circus.
The authorities themselves were so enthused with this concession to us as to give us several days' notice of their intentions to enable us to make any preparations we considered fit, while we were not faced with any obstacles in the rigging up of side-shows, gambling halls and what not.
I might have been a minister myself, for aught I know, if this clergyman had not looked and talked so like an undertaker. All this belongs to one of the side-shows, to which I promised those who would take tickets to the main exhibition should have entrance gratis. If I were writing a poem you would expect, as a matter of course, that there would be a digression now and then.
Crowds of sightseers wandered past the cattle stalls to gape at the fat bullocks; side-shows flourished, a blase goose drew marbles out of a tin canister, and a boxing showman displayed his muscles outside his tent, while his partner urged the youth of the district to come in and be thumped for the edification of the spectators.
There was another Exhibition going on, as it always goes on, in the town, for the People's Park has very little verdure and consists almost entirely of side-shows and open-air restaurants. I saw swings and merry-go-rounds, a circus, and a marionette theatre, and heard Punch and Judy discussing their domestic differences in Hungarian, and Toby barking in the same uncouth tongue.
The Palais Royal had now become a vast amusement enterprise, with side-shows of all sorts, theatres, concerts, cafés, restaurants, clubs, gambling-houses and what not all paying rents, and high ones, to the proprietor.
It seemed, however, that Colonel Witham had no immediate intention of entering the main tent, for he proceeded to walk along the line of smaller pavilions, where the side-shows proclaimed their many and monstrous attractions. The canvas of one of these presently attracted the colonel's attention, for he paused in front of it and stood studying it contemplatively.
"Well, no," she added, weakly, "I dunno's I wish anything so bad as that, but I do declare I think there ought to be somebody to keep a tight grip on Lucindy!" Who shall deem himself worthy to write the chronicle of that glorious day? There were so many incidents not set down in the logical drama; so many side-shows of circumstance!
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