The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1908-04-04
TOLD BY THE CIRCUS MAN.
About the Giants Singing, Voice and
How II Hit the People.
cleveland Plain Dealer0

"A very curious thing about the
greatest of all giants" said the old
circus man. was the difference be-
tween his speaking and his singing
voice.
His speaking voice was that of a
man of ordinary stature, his singing
voice was in keeping with his own gil
gantic size. And we never discovered
this ourselves until he had been with
us for some months, not, I'm fact. till
the end of the first season with US,
when we'd gone into winter quarters.
I'VE were sitting. the old man, the
giant and myself. in that room that
I've told you about that we had fixed
up for the giant by taking out a second
story floor and so carrying ground
floor room up through two stories to
give the giant head rOom-sitting there
one evening about a couple of days
after we'd come in rom the road, and
pretty soon we heard the cook, over
in the kitchen at the other end of the
house, humming a rune. and then the
first thing you know, We heard the
giant singing it. And singing? Why,
you never heard anything like it; and
nobody would have believed, if he
hadn't heard it, that anybody could
have such a voice.
For comparison ii was like the roar
of Niagara compared to the sound of a
little waterfall over stone in a brook
Sound? Why. l thought it was going
to make the walls bulge and blow out
the windows.
And il wasn't a harsh. rough voice
you understand either; IL was a good
smooth voice; not the most beautiful
voice you ever heard, but still a
smooth, round, deep voice of the most
amazing volume. vastly greater than
anything you had ever dreamed of in
a human voice, and it made the old
man and me sit up in wonder
And when the giant stopped we
found the whole circus was standing
arount outside the headquarters
bulding-animal men. canvas men.
drivers. the whole outfit had come UP
to hear the giant sing. and these were
men, you know. accustomed to strange
things We had eighty odd acres in
our reservation, but you could hear the
giants voice i'm the furthest corner of
it, and I didn't know then how much
further beyond; and al the first note of
it men had stopped their work and then
they had all come TO listen.
Well it was a revelation TO US to
be sure; and of course, the old man
set about to turn 1t to account, as he
did everything; the old man never let
anything get by him. But he had
some things to attend to about the
voice that winter.
las | was saying TO you. you could
hear the giants voice all over the res
ervation, and / don't know how far be-
yond; but we soon found out about
that The village was only about three
quarters of a mile away. and on still
nights and when the wind was right.
you could hear, his singing then
plainly; and il didn't exactly scare the
people; they all knew the giant and
they all liked him, but they all went to
bed early, and that wonderful sound
coming to them after they had gone to
bed did disturb 'em somewhat. And so
the old man got the giant not to sing
after 9 o'clock at night and that win
ter he had him practice up on number
of songs, which, of course, he was go
ing to have the giant sing in our next
season on the road.
I'm those days, you know, we used
TO give a concert after the show; Send
around men before the last act SELL
ing tickets for this concert: and then
when the show was over people that
hadn't bought tickets would pass out
and those that had would stay to the
concert, and sometimes half the peo-
pie would stay, or maybe only a quar-
ter of them; but whatever we got that
way was velvet. and what the old man
was going TO do was to substitute for
the music and singing we used to give
In that concert singing for the giant.
And he didn't miscalculate for the
first time the giant sang everybody