Author: Courtney Ryley Cooper

Publisher: BEYOND BOOKS HUB

Published: 2023-07-19

Total Pages: 173

ISBN-13:

course, you’ve been to the circus. You got there just in time to hear the sideshow spieler tell you that there was fortay-y-y-y-y-five minutes for fun an’ amusement beforah th’ beeg show, th’ beeg show, would begin! Fortay-y-y-y-five minutes in which to view those stra-a-a-nge people, to see The Cannibal Twins, the Skeleton Dude, the Fat Lady who has taken everay-y-y-y known method of reducing in an attempt to rid herself of her half a ton of flesh, but who gets biggah, biggah and fattah, Ladies-s-s an’ Gents, everay living-g-g breathing-g-g moment of her life! You’ve given yourself plenty of time, so you think. You want to see the menagerie and the lions and tigers and elephants, but the first thing you know, that sideshow spieler has inveigled you inside the tent and the next thing you know, somebody with a fog-horn voice is yelling in your ear: “Hurry! Hurry Everaybodi-e-e-e-e-e-e! Th’ Beeg Show is Starting-g-g-g-g!” Then you have to rush through the menagerie and get into your seat before you exactly know what’s happened. Well, it’s about the same way with the beginning of a book. You set yourself to have a lot of fun seeing the main show, and then somebody drags you off to a side performance and before you realize it, your time for reading’s up and all you’ve gotten is a lot of advance information as to what you’re going to find out if you finish the book. I suppose I’ve a lot of the boy in me. I hate introductions. Despise ’em. Yet, in a way, they’re necessary. I’ve always wanted to write a book where I could put the introduction at the end, or something like that. Because, really, an introduction seems terribly necessary. But since I couldn’t do that, I waited until I had finished writing the rest of the book, and then I wrote this, which I am busily trying to keep from being an introduction. But it seems that there’s no way out. I might as well break down and confess — that’s what it is. Th’ sideshow, th’ side-show-w-w-w-w, Ladies-s-s-s an’ Gents, th’ sideshow, while farther on, the main performance band is tuning up for the grand-d-d entrée! So, if you’re like me, and detest introductions, just let this part of the book slide on by and wait until you’ve finished the rest. Then maybe, some day when you haven’t anything to do, you can come back and see what I’ve been doing all this talking about. It’s simply this: I’ve often been asked why a circus carries so many animals around with it; whether it is merely because it wants to “fill up space” or because they are cheap or to take up time before the rest of the performance. It really is none of these. Questions like that hurt a circus man’s pride. He really thinks a lot of his animals, and he’s terribly proud of the fact that he carries them around the country, because he knows that from the fact that he does like animals a great portion of America gains its knowledge of natural history. There are comparatively few big zoölogical collections in America and all these are in the big cities; especially is this true where jungle animals are exhibited. The rest of the country must depend on the circus to make possible a close knowledge of the various beasts of faraway lands — and there is hardly a man or woman in America who was reared in a rural community who did not gain his or her early studies in this manner. And that pleases the circus man, because he always wants to feel that he is something else than merely a purveyor of amusement. Nor does he do it cheaply! For instance, the next time the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus comes to town, you’ll find in its menagerie a total of forty-four elephants. A number of them are babies, purchased at an average price of about $2500 apiece, when all costs are considered. Half of them are full grown, worth from $5000 to $10,000 each, according to their performing ability. Lump them all at an average of $4000 apiece, and you have an investment of $186,000 in elephants, to say nothing of the food they eat, and of all animals, elephants are the champion hay eaters. That’s one item. The four giraffes are another, and in case you should desire to purchase a first-class giraffe some day, just write out a check for $15,000 and then trust to good fortune to get you the animal. Giraffes are scarce. So are hippopotami and rhinoceri and great apes, to say nothing of pythons, and jungle-bred tigers and lions and leopards and other animals of their kind. Figuring the interest on the investment alone, for the number of performance days which are granted to the circus, it costs nearly $2000 a week to carry that menagerie around the country. That is the amount the original outlay would earn if it were invested in the ordinary channels of business. Nor does that include the items of trainers, of food, of assistants, cage men, dens, horses for transportation, railroad equipment and repairs, and steam haulage. So a menagerie really isn’t such a cheap adjunct, is it? Nor is that all. A few years ago, John Ringling learned that there was a wonderful ape in England. He had heard that it was a real gorilla — but didn’t believe it. He went to England and to the home of the man and woman who had reared the beast to health from a disease-ridden little thing which had been landed in London from a tramp steamer. It was a real gorilla, the first one that ever had thrived in captivity. John Ringling wanted that animal for his circus. It meant that the people of the United States would be given an opportunity to study something which neither the combined efforts of scientists nor the hunting parties of the animal companies of all the world had been able to give. He didn’t need the gorilla. The menagerie was full as it was. But there was the urge of the true circus man — to bring forth the thing which had not been seen before, to present something new. It meant a gamble of thousands of dollars. He took the chance. The check read for $30,000. John Daniel, the gorilla, was brought to the United States — and lived less than a month! Such are the risks taken by the circus man to keep his menagerie up to the plane which he desires. This is not the only instance. Expeditions have been fostered, men sent away from the United States for months, even years at a time, to gain some special animal. Perhaps the expedition is a success. More often it is a failure. But the crowds which throng through the marquee into the menagerie see nothing but the gilded cages and the picket line of elephants, giving but little thought to the effort and expense behind it all. Which worries the circus man not at all. What he is after is to get people into that menagerie. That, in the final analysis, is of course the real reason behind the menagerie — to help get people into the circus. But in doing that, a number of other things are accomplished. In the first place, the rural population is thereby given its knowledge of natural history. The farmer’s boy and the boy of the city not large enough to support a zoo get their first sight of the lion, the tiger, the elephant and giraffe and hippopotamus in a circus menagerie. With that, there comes the inevitable human attribute of making comparisons — and following that, study comes easier. It’s much more pleasant to read in the newspaper about some one you know, than it is to read about some one wholly abstract. The same is true of animals. After a person has seen the tigers in a circus, he wants to know more of them. That’s when the books come in. Nor is science neglected by the circus. It was due to the importation of John Daniel by the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey that the anthropologists of New York were able to dissect a gorilla brain and carry on their studies through an actual autopsy upon a specimen of an animal group which has been almost as mysterious as the fabled Dodo. The same thing was true with a giant animal called Casey, which was imported several years ago from Cape Lopez, Africa, by way of Australia, by a man named Fox. The animal was a mystery, and it still is a mystery. It looked like a chimpanzee, yet had characteristics and size which marked it as different from any other chimpanzee which ever had come to this country. It also had gorilla characteristics, yet it was not a gorilla. It died on an operating table in Tampa, Florida, of acute appendicitis, and following its death an autopsy was performed, showing surprising indications. For one thing, the speech centers of the brain displayed remarkable development, giving the hint that had the animal lived, there might have come the time when it would have been able to speak with the articulation of a low order of humanity. Other developments showed a close relationship to the human brain — at least a tendency in that direction. Had the circus which exhibited it known all that beforehand, it might have advertised it as the missing link. But the circus didn’t, which was perhaps just as well. However, one thing remains — Casey was a mystery, and to the circus world belongs the credit of bringing into general knowledge an animal which hinted, at least, of a strange race of ground apes which may yet be discovered in Africa, showing a development different from that of the chimpanzee and of the gorilla, yet combining both, and aiding the scientists in their researches into the beginnings of man. That Casey was a certain type of chimpanzee was, of course, true. But what type? And what gave him his peculiar, closely human countenance? And his great size? He was nearly twice as large as his friend and companion Biz, an ordinary chimpanzee, and one saw in them the dissimilarity that one notices between two widely different races of men. If Casey could only have explained! Some day another Casey may come to America. And another following that. Circus men will bring them when they come, and the investigations which follow may cause many a surprising result. And by the way, the next time you go to the circus, just try an experiment and see how much more real amusement and interest you get out of looking at the animals. Try a new viewpoint. Just remember that we are all animals; we all belong to the same kingdom. With that in mind, experiment with the idea of looking at those animals not as just so many mere brutes, but as merely a different branch of the animal kingdom to which you belong. Look upon them as foreigners, as visitors to your land from a different shore, strange but willing to learn, and with far greater perceptive powers, perhaps, than we have. As I have mentioned before, the human race is egotistical. It likes to believe that it knows everything. But a close study of animals will reveal that perhaps they can teach us things, and that, in their way, they may have every bit as much sense as we have. A dog, you know, can understand his master’s slightest whim and mood. But few indeed are the masters who can understand their dogs!...FROM THE BOOKS.