The copper country evening news. [volume] (Calumet, Mich.) 18??-1907, 1898-02-26


Freaks or In Hair Raising Acts-rh,
Lesson He Meant 70 Teach BY Shooting
the Woman ONT Of q Cannon. .---.- --.-
In this age of scramble the public too
soon forgets It's benefactors, and ever thers
Is nced Of class of devouter spirits who,
like Walter SCOTS Old Mortality, shall
60 about through the graveyards, with re-
touching mallet and chisel. seeking to
keep green the memory Of departed wor-
| thies.
Like too many Of his forerunners, the
late lamented p. T. Barnum, the aborig-
inal creator Of the greatest show on
earth, was In his day and generation q
man misunderstood-a man who, a.
Wordsworth puts 1t, wandered lonely AZ
. cloud" even amid the throngs gathered
by the more superficial attractions of his
circus. Dealing on 20 vast scale In wild
beasts and human monstrosities, few but
q select group Of bosom friends knew him
for what he really Wa, moralist In dis
guise OF the Esop type-a man who, while
he talked beasts, meant mon.
In the earlier stages Of his career POSI-
tive reprobation was heaped on his head
by Thousands who, to use their own coarse
language, felt they had been jeremy did
died In paying quarter each to revel in
the vision Of the beautiful "Fiji mer-
maid" sitting on q rock and combing her
golden locks, only to find inside the tent
the stuffed skin Of she baboon glued on
the tail of q Goldfish "Your reprobation Is
misdirected," retorted Barnum. "True;
! have got the quarters, but then in return
you have got the experience. Mermaids
are aesthetic, anatomical and psychologist
impossibilities. The one thing needful
was to work In you Q drastic, realistic
cure. My show Is strictly moral, and now
1t remains with you, as you chew the cud
of sweet and bitter reflections, to extract
the moral" Thus from the start was
manifest the serious, didactio cast of the
great mans mind.
That In SO obtuse a world as this NOR
alist of the.type of Barnum was at the out
set misunderstood is only natural When,
for example, he first doomed up before the
American public as the one man on the
planet Of the hardihood to shoot full
grown live woman out Of q cannon and
catch her on the fly In wavy net as big as
q porgy seine, who for a moment dreamed
that underlying all the pageantry Of so
sensational a spectacle lurked a pregnant
moral lessonS Yet to Barnum the moral
was the one serious consideration. To use
his favorite natural history figure of speech
for the turn Of his mind was highly
metaphorical-the moral stood out plain
~ jackass' ears. In his eyes the rest of
the exhibition, the whole external show,
was mere embellishments mere rhetorical
emphasis to excite the sluggish minds of
the thoughtless and stimulate them to re-
Fiction.
"Here"-he would break out In bis
more expansive hours of perhaps venial
self exultation-"here Is my grand para
BILE, my dramatic moral masterpiece The
supreme moral forces of the individual
and Of society are momentum and control
Momentum by itself is headlong and de-
structive. Control by itself is tame and
even sappy. In harmony they become
sublime as the centripetal and centrifugal
forces Of the solar system. Preachers in
the pulpit essay indeed to expound the
same doctrine. Preachers, however, have
no such magnificent apparatus of illustra-
ton at command as has the proprietor of
circus, and SO all remains In the realm
OF vagueness and abstraction. Their hear
ers fall asleep, but when bang goes my
big cannon and, 10, $50 pounds of glorious
womanhood-rose red, lily white, shining
ly bespangled-is seen hurtling through
the air the dullest head clears I'D. Mo-
mentum In all its titanic, all its frightful-
ly perilous bearings is grasped In trice.
The emotions pour in q mighty flood. The
fate OF woman, of a sister, hangs in
agonizing suspense. Momentum hurls her
with annihilating fury, and, unless some |
equal counter force leap to the rescue, a
second more and she must lie before the
stupendous throng Of spectators brain |
less, bleeding corpse. Now first reveals it
self the latent significance, the profound |
sym bolism. of my interposing net Action
ana reaction are equal, and SO the net |
MI st embody power of arrest at least as |
mighty as that of the gunpowder that dis |
charged the woman out of the lannon's |
mouth. But, a power, must it be yielding,
though firm; plant, though irresistible; |
absorbent as poultice, though reactive as !
a steel spring. The astonished audience |
now beholds how it envelops her, sways |
with her, defects her on 90 tangents, yet |
ever holds her safe in diminishing velocity |
till at last she lies in its embrace,
Calm a Graded child in dreamless slumber |
bound.
cit is at this crisis in the exhibition,
would proceed the great moralist, THAT l |
always scan with that smile of sympathetic |
for which am noted the vast |
amphitheater to see how many fond par
ents have caught the inner meaning of |
the dramatic spectacle and are expound- |
ing to their little boys and girls the real |
significance OF the parable-making 1t |
plain as day what the destructive momen-
tum of their own Feasibility and belliger-
ency will inevitably bring them to II they
do not learn how to enmesh and absorb it |
In the firm yet yielding net of patience
and sweetness"
Is it any wonder then, that in hours of
such effusion the world famous impre-
sario should proudly have conferred the
title of greatest moral show on earth"
upon what ordinary mortals called nothing
but Barnum's circus?''-Boston Herald.