The Queer Side of Things—Among the Freaks.

MAJOR MICROBE.

"I've been in the show business now going on for forty-three years," said the Doorkeeper, "and I haven't yet found a Dwarf with human feelings. I can't understand why it is, but there ain't the least manner of doubt that a Dwarf is the meanest object in creation. Take General Bacillus, the Dwarf I have with me now. He is well made, for a Dwarf, and when he does his poses plastic, such as 'Ajax Defying the Lightning,' or 'Samson Carrying off Delilah by the Hair,' and all the rest of those Scripture tablows, he is as pretty as a picture, provided, of course, you don't get too near him. He is healthy, and has a good appetite, and he draws a good salary, and has no one except himself to look after. And yet that Dwarf ain't happy! On the contrary, he is the most discontented, cantankerous, malicious little wretch that was ever admitted into a Moral Family Show. And he ain't much worse than an ordinary Dwarf. Now, the other Freaks, as a rule, are contented so long as they draw well and don't fall in love.

"The Living Skeleton knows that he can't expect to live long—most of them die at about thirty-five—but, for all that, he is happy and contented. 'A short life and a merry one is what I goes in for,' he often says to me, and he seems to think that his life is a merry one, though I can't myself see where the merriment comes in. So with all the rest of my people. They all seem to enjoy themselves except the Dwarf. My own belief is that the organ of happiness has got to be pretty big to get its work in, and that there ain't room in a Dwarfs head for it to work.

"I had a Dwarf with me once—Major Microbe is what we called him on the bills, where he was advertised as the 'Smallest Man in the World,' which, of course, he wasn't; but, then, every Dwarf is always advertised that way. It's a custom of the profession, and we don't consider it to be lying, any more than a President considers the tough statements lying that he makes in his annual message. A showman and a politician must be allowed a little liberty of statement, or they couldn't carry on their business. Well, as I was saying, thishyer Major Microbe was in my show a matter of ten years ago, when we were in Cincinnati, and he was about as vicious as they make them. The Giant, who was a good seven-footer, working up to seven and a half feet, as an engineer might say, with the help of his boots and helmet, was the exact opposite of the Dwarf in disposition. He was altogether too good-tempered, for he was always trying to play practical jokes on the other Freaks. He did this without any notion of annoying them, but it was injudicious; he being, like all other Giants, weak and brittle.

"What do I mean by brittle? Why, I mean brittle and nothing else. It's a good United States word, I reckon. Thishyer Giant's bones weren't made of the proper materials, and they were always liable to break. He had to take the greatest care of himself, and to avoid arguing on politics or religion or anything like that, for a kick on the shins would be sure to break one of his legs, which would lay him on the shelf for a couple of months. As for his arms, he was for ever breaking one or two of them, but that didn't so much matter, for he could go on the stage with his arm in splints and a sling, and the public always supposed that he was representing a heroic soldier who had just returned from the battle-field.

"HE FOUND THE DWARF ASLEEP ON A BENCH."

"One day the Giant put up a job on the Dwarf that afterwards got them both into serious trouble. The Giant was loafing around the place after dinner, and he found the Dwarf asleep on a bench. What does he do but cover him up with a rug and then go off in search of the Fat Woman, who was a sure enough Fat Woman, and weighed in private life four hundred and nineteen pounds. The Giant was popular with the sex, and the Fat Woman was glad to accept his invitation to come with him and listen to a scheme that he pretended to have for increasing the attractions of Fat Women. He led her up to where the Dwarf was asleep on the bench and invited her to sit down, saying that he had arranged a cushion for her to make her comfortable. Of course she sat down, and sat down pretty solid, too, directly on the Dwarf. The Dwarf yelled as if he had room for the voice of two full-grown men, and the Fat Woman, as soon as she felt something squirming under her, thought that one of the boa constrictors had got loose, and that she had sat down on it. So naturally she fainted away. I came running in with one of my men as soon as I heard the outcries, and after a while we managed to pry up the Fat Woman with a couple of cart-rungs and get the Dwarf out from under her, after which she came to in due time and got over her fright. But the Dwarf was a good deal flattened out by the pressure, and I was afraid at first that his ribs had been stove in. It turned out in the end that he was not seriously injured; but he was in the worst rage against the Giant that you can imagine, and would have killed him then and there if he had been able to do it.

"I knew well enough that in course of time the Dwarf would get square with the Giant, no matter how long it might take and how much it might cost. He was as revengeful as a Red Indian. I warned the Giant that he must keep a sharp look-out, or the Dwarf would do him a mischief; but he said 'he calculated he was big enough to take care of himself, and that he wasn't afraid of no two-foot Dwarf that ever breathed.' Of course, this sounded brave, but my own belief is that the Giant was pretty badly frightened. I noticed that he never allowed himself to be alone with the Dwarf, and was always careful to mind where he stepped, so as not to get tripped up by strings stretched across the path, or anything of that sort. The Dwarf pretended that he had forgotten the whole business, and was as friendly with the Giant as he had ever been; but I knew him well enough to know that he never forgot anything, and was only waiting for a chance.

"Pretty soon little accidents began to happen to the Giant. One day he would find that his helmet, which was made of pasteboard, had fallen into a tub of water, and gone to everlasting jelly. This would oblige him to show himself bare-headed, which took off several inches from his professional height. Another day his boots would be in the tub, and he wouldn't be able to get them on. I've seen him go on the stage in a general's uniform with carpet slippers and no hat, which everyone knew must be contrary to the regulations of the Arabian army, in which he was supposed to hold his commission.

"One night his bedstead broke down under him, and he came very near breaking a leg or so. In the morning he found out that someone had sawed a leg of the bedstead nearly all the way through, and, of course, he knew that the Dwarf had done it. But you couldn't prove anything against the Dwarf. He would always swear that he never had any hand in the accidents, and there was never any evidence against him that anybody could get hold of. I didn't mind what games he played on the Giant as long as the Giant wasn't made to break anything that would lay him on the shelf, and I told the Dwarf that I was the last man to interfere with any man's innocent amusements, but that in case the Giant happened to break a leg, I should go out of the Giant and Dwarf business at once. But that didn't scare him a particle. He knew that he was worth his salary in any Dime Museum in America, and more than that, he had money enough laid up in the bank to live on, assuming, of course, that he could draw it out before the cashier should bolt to Canada with it. So he was as independent as you please, and told me that if I chose to hold him responsible for other people's legs he couldn't help it, and had nothing to say about it.

"At that time I had a Female Samson. She wasn't the Combined Female Contortionist and Strongest Woman in the World that is in my show at present, but she was in about the same line of business. These Strong Women are all genuine, you understand. You can embellish them a little on the handbills, and you can announce that the cannon that the Strong Woman fires from her shoulder weighs a hundred or two pounds more than it actually weighs; but unless a Strong Woman is really strong and no mistake, she might as well try to pass herself off as a Living Skeleton or a Two-Headed Girl at once. The fact is, the great majority of Freaks are genuine, and the business is a thoroughly honest one at bottom. Why, if you told the exact truth in the handbills about every Freak in my show, barring the Tattooed Girl and the Wild Man, they would still constitute a good drawing attraction in any intelligent community.

"This Female Samson was a good sort of woman in her way, though she was a little rough and a bit what you might call masculine in her ways. She didn't like the Dwarf, and he didn't like her.

"SHE PULLED HIM OVER TO HER BY HIS COLLAR."

"The Freaks were all at supper one night when the Dwarf said something insulting to the Female Samson. He sat right opposite to her, and she just reached across the table and pulled him over to her by his collar. Then she stretched him across her lap and laid into him with her slipper till he howled as if he was a small boy who had gone in swimming on Sunday and his mother had just found it out. It wasn't so much the slipper that hurt him, though the Female Samson put all her muscle into the operation, but it was the disgrace of the thing; and when you remember that the Dwarf was forty-two years old, you can understand that he felt that the woman had taken a liberty with him. However, the next day he seemed to have forgotten all about it, and when the Giant reminded him of the circumstance, which he did every little while, the Dwarf would grin and say that we must let the women do what they liked, for they were a superior sort of being.

"One of the Female Samson's best feats was done in company with the Dwarf and the Giant. She had a horizontal bar fixed on the stage, about ten feet above the floor. On this bar she used to swing head downwards, just hooking her knees around it, as all the trapeze artists do. It looks sort of uncomfortable, but it is nothing when you are used to it. I had a trapeze chap once who would often go to sleep that way in hot weather. He said that all the blood in his body went into his head, and that made him feel sleepy, while it cooled off his body and legs. There's no accounting for tastes, but as for me, give me a good bed where I can stretch out, and I'll never ask to sleep on a trapeze bar.

"As I was saying, the Female Samson would swing on this bar, and then she would take the Dwarf's belt in her teeth and hold him in that way for five minutes. There was a swivel in the belt, so that the Dwarf would spin round while she was holding him, which he didn't like much, but which pleased the public. After she had swung the Dwarf she would do the same act with the Giant. She had to be very careful not to drop the Giant, for he was terribly afraid of breaking a leg, being, as I have said, particularly brittle; but she always said that he was as safe in her teeth as he would be if he was lying in his bed.

"It must have been about a fortnight after the Dwarf was sat on by the Fat Woman, and a week or more after he had been corrected in public by the Female Samson, that we had an unusually large evening audience, and everybody was in excellent spirits. The Female Samson had swung the Dwarf in her teeth, and after she had let go of him he had climbed up on a chair just behind her, and stood with his arms stretched out over her and the Giant as if he was saying 'Bless you, my children,' which was a regular part of the act, and never failed to bring him a round of applause, and induce people to say, 'What a jolly little chap that Dwarf is!' When the Female Samson had got a good grip of the Giant's belt, and had raised him about five feet from the floor, the Dwarf leaned a little bit forward and ran a pin into the Female Samson's ankle, or thereabouts. Nobody saw him do it, but it was easy to prove it on him afterwards, for he dropped the pin on the floor when he had finally got through with it, and everybody recognised it as one of his scarf-pins.

"The woman would naturally have shrieked when she felt the pin, but she had her mouth full of the Giant, and she couldn't do more than mumble a little in a half-smothered sort of way. The Dwarf paid no attention to that, but gave her another eye-opener with the pin. It went in about an inch, judging from what the Female Samson said when she described her sufferings, and it must have hurt her pretty bad; but she was full of pluck and bound to carry out her performance to the end. She stood three or four more prods, and then, not being able to stand it any longer without expressing her feelings in some way, she unhooked one leg and fetched the Dwarf a kick on the side of the head that reminded him that it was about time for him to get into his own room and lock the door, and convinced him that there ain't a bit of exaggeration in the tough stories that they tell about the kicking powers of an army mule. The kick sent the Dwarf clean across the platform, and the people, not understanding the situation, began to cry 'Shame.' Whether this flurried the Female Samson or not, or whether she lost her balance entirely on account of having unhooked one leg, I don't know. What I do know is that she slipped off the bar, and she and the Giant struck the floor with a crash that would have broken planks, if it had not been that the platform was built expressly to stand the strain of the Fat Woman.

"It wouldn't have been so bad if she had just dropped the Giant, and hung on to the bar herself. In that case he would probably have broken his left leg and arm and collar bone, just as he did break them, but his ribs would have been all right. As it was, the Female Samson's head came down just in the centre of him, and stove in about three-fourths of his ribs. She wasn't hurt at all, for, being a woman, and falling on her head, there was nothing for her to break, and the Giant was so soft that falling on him didn't even give her a headache. When some volunteers from the audience had picked up the Giant and put him on a stretcher and carried him to the hospital, where the doctors did their best to mend him, the Female Samson had a chance to explain, and the finding of a long scarf-pin on the platform, just under the bar, was evidence that she had told the truth, and corroborated the red stain on her stocking.

"IT TOOK FOUR MEN AND A POLICEMAN TO HOLD HER."

"It took four men and a policeman to hold her, and get her locked up in her room, she was that set on tearing the Dwarf into small pieces, and she'd have done it too, if she could have got at him. He had sense enough to see the situation, and to discharge himself without waiting for me to discharge him. He ran away in the course of the night, and I never saw him again. I don't think he ever went into another Dime Museum, and I have heard that he got a situation as inspector of gas meters, which is very probable, considering what a malicious little rascal he was. Well, we have to deal with all sorts of people in our business, and I suppose it's the same with you, though you haven't mentioned what your business is. But you take my advice and steer clear of Dwarfs. There ain't a man living that can do anything with them except with a club, and no man likes to take a club to anything as small as a Dwarf."

W. L. ALDEN.