We was jogging along one afternoon not fur from a good-sized town at the top of Ohio, right on the lake, when we run acrost some remainders of a busted circus riding in a stake and chain wagon. They was two fellers--both jugglers, acrobats, and tumblers--and a balloon.
The circus had busted without paying them nothing but promises fur months and months, and they had took the team and wagon and balloon by attach-ment, they said. They was carting her from the little burg the show busted in to that good-sized town on the lake. They would sell the team and wagon there and get money enough to put an advertisement in the Billboard, which is like a Bible to them showmen, that they had a balloon to sell and was at liberty.
One of them was the slimmest, lightest-footed, quickest feller you ever seen, with a big nose and dark complected, and his name was Tobias. The other was heavier and blonde complected. His name was Dobbs, he said, and they was the Blanchet Brothers. Doctor Kirby and them got real well acquainted in about three minutes. We drove on ahead and got into the town first.
The doctor says that balloon is jest wasted on them fellers. They can't go up in her, not knowing that trade, but still they ought to be some way fur them to make a little stake out of it before it was sold.
The next evening we run acrost them fellers on the street, and they was feeling purty blue. They hadn't been able to sell that team and wagon, which it was eating its meals reg'lar in a livery stable, and they had been doing stunts in the street that day and passing around the hat, but not getting enough fur to pay expenses.
"Where's the balloon?" asts the doctor. And I seen he was sicking his intellects onto the job of making her pay.
"In the livery stable with the wagon," they tells him.
He says he is going to figger out a way to help them boys. They is like all circus performers, he says--they jest knows their own acts, and talks about 'em all the time, and studies up ways to make 'em better, and has got no more idea of business outside of that than a rabbit. We all went to the livery stable and overhauled that balloon. It was an awful job, too. But they wasn't a rip in her, and the parachute was jest as good as new.
"There's no reason why we can't give a show of our own," says Doctor Kirby, "with you boys and Danny and me and that balloon. What we want is a lot with a high board fence around it, like a baseball grounds, and the chance to tap a gas main." He says he'll be willing to take a chancet on it, even paying the gas company real money to fill her up.
What the Doctor didn't know about starting shows wasn't worth knowing. He had even went in for the real drama in his younger days now and then.
"One of my theatrical productions came very near succeeding, too," he says.
It was a play he says, in which the hero falls in love with a pair of Siamese twins and commits suicide because he can't make a choice between them.
"We played it as comedy in the big towns and tragedy in the little ones," he says. "But like a fool I booked it for two weeks of middle-sized towns and it broke us."The next day he finds a lot that will do jest fine.
It has been used fur a school playgrounds, but the school has been moved and the old building is to be tore down. He hired the place cheap. And he goes and talks the gas company into giving him credit to fill that balloon. Which I kept wondering what was the use of filling her, fur none of the four of us had ever went up in one. And when I seen the handbills he had had printed I wondered all the more. They read as follers:
Kirby's Komedy Kompany and Open Air Circus Presenting a Peerless Personnel of Artistic Attractions Greatest in the Galaxy of Gaiety, is Hartley L. Kirby Monologuist and minstrel, dancer and vaudevillian in his terpsichorean travesties, buoyant burlesques, inimitable imitations, screaming impersonations, refined comedy sketches and popular song hits of the day.
The Blanchet Brothers Daring, Dazzling, Danger-Loving, Death-Defying Demons Joyous jugglers, acrobatic artists, constrictorial contortionists, exquisite equilibrists, in their marvellous, mysterious, unparalleled performances.
Umslopogus The Patagonian Chieftain The lowest type of human intellect This formerly ferocious fiend has so far succumbed to the softer wiles of civilization that he is no longer a cannibal, and it is now safe to put him on exhibition.
But to prevent accidents he is heavily manacled, and the public is warned not to come too near.
Balloon! Balloon!! Balloon!!!
The management also presents the balloon of Prof. Alonzo Ackerman The Famous Aeronaut in which he has made his Wonderful Ascension and Parachute Drop many times, reaching remarkable altitudes Balloon! Balloon!! Balloon!!!
Saturday, 3 P. M.
Old Vandegrift School Lot Admission 50 Cents Well, fur a writer he certainly laid over Looey, Doctor Kirby did--more cheerful-like, you might say. I seen right off I was to be the Patagonian Chieftain. I was getting more and more of an actor right along--first an Injun, then a wild Borneo, and now a Patagonian.
"But who is this Alonzo Ackerman?" I asts him.
"Celebrated balloonist," says he, "and the man that invented parachutes. They eat out of his hand.""Where is he?" asts I.
"How should I know?" he says.
"How is he going up, then?" I asts.
The doctor chuckles and says it is a good bill, a better bill than he thought; that it is getting in its work already. He says to me to read it careful and see if it says Alonzo Ackerman is going up.
Well, it don't. But any one would of thought so the first look. I reckon that bill was some of a liar herself, not lying outright, but jest hinting a lie. They is a lot of mean, stingy-souled kind of people wouldn't never lie to help a friend, but Doctor Kirby wasn't one of 'em.