Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 6).djvu/104

OW I became acquainted with the door-keeper is of no consequence. He assisted me to pass away several weary hours that I once spent in Chicago. I know very well that they ought not to have been weary hours. I should have visited the pork-packing establishments, and gazed at and duly admired the fifteen and twenty-story buildings that Chicago will continue to pride herself upon until an earthquake comes and convinces the occupants of the upper stories that it would have been better for them if they had never been born. It happened, however, that I was snowbound, and waiting until the snowploughs should succeed in opening the way for the trans-continental trains. Being thus compelled to wait against my will, I was discontented, and took no delight in pork or tall buildings. It was in these circumstances that I met the door-keeper, and found him to be, in the words of the landlord of my hotel, "One of the nicest gentlemen and spryest fighters in all Chicago."

The door-keeper was the chief owner and manager of a Dime Museum. The American Dime Museum does not bear the most distant resemblance to the British Museum. It is simply an exhibition of monstrosities, genuine and artificial, and the public is admitted to view them on payment of a dime. These monstrosities, known in the "profession" as "freaks," seem to be produced in quantities to supply the demand. Every Dime Museum professes to have the tallest giant, the smallest dwarf, the fattest fat woman, and the most beautiful Circassian girl in existence. There are three or four Dime Museums in every city in the United States, not to speak of those that are on the road. How they all manage to find the necessary stock of genuine "freaks" is a mystery which the outside public cannot solve.

My door-keeper was, as I have said, the proprietor of his museum, but he occupied the post of door-keeper for the reason that he could thus make sure of receiving the money paid for admission, and, being a powerfully-built man, could prevent the entrance of disorderly persons, and thus preserve the reputation of his museum as an "unequalled family resort," a claim made for it by the