When they get in the ring they look around to see if
all eyes are upon them, and bow to people who are looking at something
going on in another ring, and who don't see them, and then they go
through their performance with everybody looking somewhere else.
When the act is over the audience seems glad, and clap their hands
because they are polite, and it don't cost anything to clap hands, and
the performers turn some more flip flaps, and go running out to the
dressing-room, and take a peek back into the big tent as though
expecting an encore, but the audience has forgotten them and is looking
for the next mess of performers, and the ones who have just been in go
and lie down on straw and wonder if they can hit the treasurer for an
advance on their salaries, so they can go to a beer garden and forget it
all.
An average audience never gets its money's worth unless some one is hurt
doing some daring act. Pa suggested that they have some one pretend to
be hurt in every act, and have them picked up and carried out on
stretchers with doctors wearing red crosses on their arms in attendance,
giving medicine and restoratives. The show tried it at Bucyrus, O., and
had seven men and two women injured so they had to be carried out, and
the audience went wild, and almost mobbed the dressing-room, to see the
doctor operate on the injured.
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