Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1903-05-09
TOLD BY THE OLD CIRCUS MAN.
Fun for the Giant When the Show Was
in Winter Quarters.

He was a great skater, the greatest
of all giants" said the old circus man,
land one of the things that pleased
him most about our winter quarters
was the fact that there was, nearby, a
good skating pond.
THE giants skates, to be sure, We're
a little bit bigger than the ordinary.
AS matter of fact the blades We're
about as long as scythes blades, and
the straps--that was, you know, before
the days of the present clamp skates
We're about as big and about as long
as trunk straps.
We had settled cold weather pretty
early there-we We're likely to have
skating by Thanksgiving, but every
year, weeks before that, the giant
would have his great skates out He
was little too prompt in getting them
out sometimes, as he was, for instance,
the first year we stayed in these quar-
| tiers.
THAT year the giant got out his
skates and went down to the pond and
dashed out on the thin ice as fine as
could be till he came to a spot over
what everybody called the deep hole
and then down he went. 1t was as if,
by Jimmy, he'd just skated out to
do that. and he was through the ice
and going down almost before anybody
knew it. and then the few folks around
on the banks begun to holler and
scream because they expected in a min
ute to see him disappear entirely,
drawn under the ice to drown.
But in minute, by gracious, he
stopped going down, and then they saw
him standing there in the middle of the
pond, in the deep hole, with his feet, ap-
parently, firmly fixed on the ground,
while the water and ice didn't come up
much more than about to his chest.
well that gave all the people around
| there. for the first time. you know,
some sort of an adequate idea of the
| giants size. They had known before,
of course, we'll enough, that he was
| something more than wonderful, but
| when they saw him standing with his
head and shoulders clear above the
surface in that danger spot where
| everybody could remember, somebody
had been drowned, why, then they
began to realize how tall he really was.
And l don't know but what in his
skating, natural as it all was, he made
about as tremendous a figure as he did
in anything else he did. If you could
have seen him, towering high up in the
air, high above everybody there, as
much higher as a schooner would be
than a great throng of catboats, and
ne leaning over this way and that, in
the same way as he skated, you would
have thought he was something amaZ-
ing, l am sure.
:" AS l have often told you, the giant
was a good-humored man, of friendly
disposition and he didn't become any
less so, by any means here. On the
contrary, he took part in all the games
and sports on the ice, and enjoyed
them all. too.
HE played hockey with a hockey
stick as long as a telegraph pole and
as big round as a tree; and when he
played he took one side all alone, and
played against as many as wanted to
play on the other.
IF he set out to tow bunch of peo-
pie he wouldn't have just half a doz-
en-. or a dozen, tagging after him, but
he would have two or three hundred
| folks, grown-ups as well as children.
And so he would set off around the
pond with a train of people after him
as long as the tail of a comet.
Later. the great giant took some
part in the life of the town, where he
was received with most friendly kind
ness and generally esteemed. But no
role in which the giant ever appeared
| in all the time he was there pleased
more people or pleased them more than
did his gyrations on the ice, and I have
no doubt that no inconsiderable share
of the friendliness always exhibited to
him later was first awakened by his
own perfect friendlness shown to
young and old alike in that early in
| formal association on the skating
pond