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Show MlMMMMilllllll raw L tffmmfmG! L rrf (n tVCK V x By PROEHL HALLER JAKLON Drawlncs by nay Walter. I asked my mother for fifty cents To 6ee the elephant Jump the fence. Ho Jumped so high he hit the sky. He won't be back till Fourth of July. cck" IMES change and fash-ttjl3" fash-ttjl3" Ions change. But the 1 1 circus, the Biggest A. J Show on Earth, wheth-er wheth-er It open Its tent fpwcvrxr?i flaps In your town or u vy. WL m'ue 1" your father's 1 time or yours, is ever U 'Tf tl the same old pageant of color and action. Tinseled ladies in tights smile as they fly through space at giddy heights ; clowns scamper insanely in-sanely around the arena ; cowboys and girls ride madly hither and thither; bareback riders leap nimbly from horse to horse. The circus goes on. Here is a human pyramid constructed construct-ed In a wink of strong men and strong women. Over there are seals balancing balanc-ing gaily-colored spheres on their noses and tossing balls to each other for the reward of a fresh fish. Jumping horses, white and pink tights, dashing vehicles with all the rings competing for our attention, we are at a complete loss as to where to focus it. We do not wish to miss anything, and still some of the very best acts get no proper attention because be-cause we are expecting something to happen somewhere else. Before certain a?ts the ringmaster ehouts a loud announcement which no one understands. A blast of a trumpet and a long roll of drums to suaslve oratory served up free of charge on the outside? There's the midget, with his unchanging un-changing grin, reaching from ear to ear, his calm manner and his dress suit, strikingly out of place in the light of day. Then the giant, looking sheepish in his ineffectual masslve-ness. masslve-ness. Next, perhaps, a Wild Man from Borneo or a pair of midget bushmen. The Fat Lady, whose proportions are unbelievable, bursts through a simple white dress, fashioned more after the dimensions of a tent than of any garment gar-ment designed for more personal and individual human occupation. In ridiculous ri-diculous contrast Is the Living Skeleton, Skele-ton, that animated pair of walking stilts who exists, it seems, in defiance to nature's laws. The others are there, too. The Sword Swallower, the Fire Eater, the Glass Cruncher, the Snake Charmer (who flies Into a rage if you as much as suggest that his pets are minus their sacs of deadly poison), the Two-headed Two-headed Sheep, pictured on the outside as alive and kicking as you would want, but found actually, after we've paid our money, to be lifeless and still, einhbalmed in a glass case. From the circus of Nero's time to the gay show as we know It, the word itself has meant fun and frolic and a good time. We say "Didn't we have a circus !" But the Roman youth was cheated out of one thrill of the circus he couldn't go down to the tracks early of a morning and watch the circus detrain. For this Is an event In the lives of little men. From the time the billposter sloshes barns and fences -j have a circus !" But the Roman youth was cheated out of one thrill of the circus he couldn't go down to the tracks early of a morning and watch the circus detrain. For this Is an event In the lives of little men. From the time the billposter sloshes barns and fences rivet your attention. Then, all too often, we see an act that by no means deserves this very special heralding. In the animal tent we find the same old dusty elephants, a flock of camels, a zebra or two, perhaps a giraffe with great eyes, and sometimes a hippo. The monkeys- still like peanuts and the mountain lions are snarly. And If you find a talkative attendant attend-ant you can learn lots . of interesting things in the menagerie. For instance, when the weather is very hot, it Is the 'lions and the tigers, who come from hot climates, that suffer from the heat. The polar bears, on the other hand, natives of the Arctic and used to the cold, don't seem to mind the heat at all. Then there's the side show with Its freaks and fakirs (which, many of us are skeptical enough to believe, should be spelled with an "e" in place of the "1"). And who can decide which Is the more attractive the offerings of-ferings Inside this tent of wonders or the hoakum and ballyhoo and per- with gaudy posters announcing, in letters tall as a man, the great day on which the circus is to arrive, the youth of the favored town await that eventful morning when the mysterious train steams into view, comes to a halt and disgorges the queerest appearing ap-pearing lot of people, paraphernalia and whatnot that the eyes of youngsters young-sters ever were permitted to see. As if by magic, hundreds of hard-boiled hard-boiled roustabouts, working furiously, and with the precision and dexterity that comes only to those who have learned their parts through countless experiences, are at their posts, and the task of unpacking a circus has begun. They work fast. The big parade is scheduled for half-past ten, and by that time wagons must be put in readiness, horses groomed and harnessed, har-nessed, and everything running with machinelike regularity. And what is a circus if there is no parade! A buzz of excitement runs through the town. Business is tern- porarlly halted. Long before scheduled sched-uled time, the line of march Is lined with happy, carefree onlookers. Despite De-spite the crowd the street Is strangely silent Then some one shouts "Here they come I" And the parade Is on. Circus men will tell you that the prestige of the enterprise depends to a considerable extent upon the length and quality of the parade. A short, shabby parade conveys the Idea of a dinky, mediocre circus. "Only ond band? Two starved elephants? And no calliope?" A poor circus Indeed, la the thought that runs through the disappointed crowd. Yes, the circus is an old, old Institution. Insti-tution. Nero was a circus fan at a time when bread, Instead of peanuts, hot dogs, and pink lemonade, went together to-gether with circuses. This was the Circus Maximus whose 12,000,000 square feet of area lay between the Palatine and Aventlne hills of Rome, and accommodated, it Is estimated, nearly 250,000 spectators.' Here the Romans sat round-eyed watching the feats of the strong men and laughed at the funny faces of caowns, dead now these 2,000 years. There were athletes and chariot races and living statuary only tights were considered not in good taste. And how the crowd would delight when those early Christians were thrown to the lions ( But, essentially, the circus is the same. All color, noise, confusion, abandonment, chaos ; so it starts, so It ends. It is the great leveler. You go In palpitating and come out exhausted ex-hausted physically, emotlonallj. To man, woman, child, it is 'all the same. There are additions and deletions : new fashions and features change outside out-side and a few creep in to join with the changeless. Nero never saw elephants ele-phants on roller skates. We are forbidden for-bidden the horrible spectacle of feeding feed-ing humans to wild beasts. But surely the Roman circus had nothing more terrible than that collection of freaks In our side show. For the Romans prized beauty and perfection even if their value of human life was cheap. Even New York and Chicago and other large cities, which offer no end of amusements for their citizens, go to the circus and enjoy It Immensely. But in these large places part of the glamor and romance of the circus, as most of us know it, is lost. No one goes down to the tracks to see It come in. It is held indoors in a large building, and runs, not for one day, but for weeks. And there is no parade. City traffic is too heavy, and the dollars that every tie-up and knot in the swift movement of vehicles ve-hicles loses to business are too precious pre-cious to be sacrificed for a mere circus parade. But once inside ' the new Madison Square Garden in New York or the Coliseum in Chicago, your city circus goer has the same good time and he thrills to the same reckless performance. perform-ance. Since the advent of the movies there has been some talk regarding the possibility of the slow dying-out of the circus. It Is perhaps true that fewer companies are on the road now than there were twenty years ago, but many of these have been consolidated, consoli-dated, making for bigger, grander and gaudier shows, each the Greatest is Earth. BUy . |