A ginger ale jag is terrible.
When a man is full of ginger ale his intestines loop the loop, and tie
up in knots, and gripe like cholera infantum, and unless his friends
hold him he goes out into the world and wants to kill the women and
children, and non-combatants.
Last year our press agents filled up the members of the local press with
ginger ale, and when we struck Philadelphia this time the newspapers had
sworn out warrants for our show, on the charge of compounding a felony,
which I suppose is the legal name for ginger ale. The way the Quakers
patronize a show is to put on their gray clothes, and their big white
hats and stand on the corners when the parade goes by, and never crack a
smile, or act interested, and when the parade has passed they go to the
circus lot and see the balloon ascension, and stand on wagon wheels and
try to look over the side of the tent at the performance, and then they
kick because the audience on the back seats cut off their view from the
wagon wheels.
Last year our show killed a Quaker, and the community is down on us. The
Quaker got in the show because he owned a half inch of ground that its
tents were on, and he stood right by the ring, and when the champion
female rider was suspended in the air between two bareback horses, he
leaned over too far inside the ring, and she kicked his hat clear up to
the roof of the tent, and a female trapeze performer up there caught it
and sat down on it on the trapeze.
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