The Ottawa free trader. [volume] (Ottawa, Ill.) 1843-1916, 1869-06-05


walls Of houses, board fences, side walks and
othd sconspicuous places, were covered with
" flaming posters" announcing that the peo-
pie Of Ottawa and country adjacent thereto
and around, were to be astounded, and dunn
founded by spectacle Of unusual hugsness-
or words to that effect.
This exhibition purperted to be a series Of
horse trots, rs6eA racks and PAGES; veloc-
ipede race or 60, and lastly, finally, and sub
timely unique, that the proprietor of this
mammoth exhibition was professor, and
had wife who is professor-ess, and these
same posters announced to gaping world
that Madam Williams would ascend in o
monstrous balloon, to giddy height away
in tho midst Of the etherial blue above the
clouds, ss it were. All this was to be per-
formed, not on one day alone, but two days
ccnsecutively-"rght along one after the
other" Thus our dose Of compound as
constituent was to be doubled.
All these manifold and unheard of wonders
were to be spread out before the bewildered
populace at the fair grounds, at the beggarly
price of fifty cents per head, each day, or
four. full grown tickets for-two dollars
The suspicious day of these marvels, with
the Professor and the fair Professor-ess, came
in regular order. All day long the gate was
besieged BY an anxious crowd of citizens on
foot, on horseback, on mules, in omnibusses,
in double carriages, in buggies, on drays, and
BY any conveyance to be procured. Doctors
wrote, on their states, {" Absent for a few
hours!n Lawyers deserted their dusty dsns
and left the spiders unmolested to drop their
tiny threads from ceilings, hooks and corners,
with none to make them afraid; policeman
went to watch thieves, and the thieves to ply
their Irregular biz; saloon boys dosed in
their shopa, with no dry customers to intrude
upon their slumbers; clerks lounged in idle
meas upon dry goods boxes, and merchants
forgot bills payable, and saucy ''duns," and
even editors were tempted to follow the gap
ing multitude; and all day did half dollars
pass freely from trembling and sweaty hands
into the capacious pockets of the cool pro-
lessor.
The time for the races came but no race.
The hour for the velo clpedists to spede came
also, but nary yeloc,-not pede! The
balloon however was there, and anon it
swelled, and grew pompous, and as it swelled
so did the crowd with expectation. Soon it
was full, and then the smiling superior wom-
an, the invincible and majestic female, who is
q Professor-ess, came forward. The crowd
was nearly craze dwith ethusiasm. Oh what
if the charming creature who sits in that frail
should be dashed to the cruel
earth from giddy height? What if the
winds should carry her far off and plunge her
into Lake Michigan, or in the bounding Miss
issippi l., What if she were to become nervous
and fall out, right over the crowd, after she
had got mile high and then-think of it,
she would be dashed to pieces even before
their very eyes, and under their very noses,--
and bespatter them with her hlood-as it
were! And they thought of their own heads
too. tor in that event how many Others might
not she kill All there and thousand other
reflections agitated their minds, but in the
meantime the balloon did not 60 up, in fact
never rose foot, and wouldn't even month
hence. "Sold exclaimed all Indignantly, and
sold they were. The Professor and his fair
companion have left, ind what ia most
curious of all, after diligent search we have
been unable to fnd any person willing to
acknowledge he was there.
John A. Logan has appeared in new role.
The Cairo Bulletin has notice posting him
to deliver sermon from q Methodist pulnit