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handbills. He loved to talk of his professional experiences and in unfolding to me the private life of his "freaks" he opened up a new world. This is the story he told me concerning his "Wild Man of Borneo."

The wild man of Borneo.

"'Yes, sir! As I was saying, managing a company of 'freaks' ain't no picnic. They're the most quarrelsome lot that was ever got together outside of a meeting of politicians who want to bring about harmony in the party. A Fat Woman puts on more airs than any two Eyetalian primy-donners, and for bad temper there is nothing that can touch a Beautiful Circassian Girl. I have to spend about one-third of my time in keeping my people from throwing crockery and pulling hair. Except when they're falling in love, there ain't a day that some one of them don't come to me and swear that he or she'll leave if I don't discharge someone else.

"Last year I had a Wild Man of Borneo who was dead in love with the Tattooed Lady. It was Barnum that invented the tattooed business, and for a while it was the best line of business in the profession. Every museum was bound to have a Tattooed Girl, with a yarn about her having been captured by the Indians and tattooed when she was a little girl. My Circassian Girl jumped at the chance of changing her line, for Circassian Girls don't begin to draw as they did twenty years ago, and when I proposed to her to do the Tattooed Girl act, she set to work at once to draw patterns for the tattooing, and being a mighty smart girl she got up some of the best designs that I ever saw.

"My Wild Man of Borneo was a thin, cadaverous little chap, chock-full of sentiment and poetry and all that sort of nonsense. When he got on his paint, and danced his war-dance, and howled—in what folks thought was the Borneo language—and swallowed raw meat, you'd have thought that he was about as murdering a style of savage as could be found, though he really wouldn't have hurt a fly. We kept him in a cage labelled 'Dangerous' until his part in the performance came round, and then a keeper would take him out and lead him with a chain around his waist to the platform, where he went through with his dancing and raw meat eating. I paid him a good salary, and he was worth it. I wish I had him back again in his cage. The Wild Man I've got now is an Irishman, and he can't howl without a brogue that's bound to give him away some day.

"Stencilling."

"Now this Wild Man, the first one I mentioned, you understand, was the kind of chap that is always falling in love, and of course he fell in love with the Beautiful Circassian. He wanted to marry her, and seeing as she didn't draw very well, and was getting tired of the business, and knowing that he was getting a good salary, and was a leading man in his line, she agreed to marry him. I never liked the girl, for she was bad-tempered and selfish, and I knew she didn't care a straw for the Wild Man, but I told her and him that if they'd wait six months I'd give them a bang-