Well, I have broke the show all to pieces, just by not being able to
stand grief. Everything is all balled up, the managers are sore at me,
and afraid of being sent to jail, and pa thinks I ought to be mauled.
It was this way: When we left Washington we cut loose from every home
tie, and plunged into Virginia, and the trouble began at once. We met a
lawyer on the train, on the way to Richmond, and fed him in our dining
car, and got him acquainted with all the performers and freaks, and he
told us that we would have to be careful in Virginia, 'cause all the
white people were first families and aristocratic, and if any man about
our show should fail to be polite to the white people they would be shot
or lynched, but if we wanted to shoot niggers the game laws were not
very strict about it, 'cause the open season on niggers run the year
around, but you couldn't shoot white people only two months in the year.
He said another thing that scared pa and the managers. He said that if a
traveling show did not perform all it advertised the owners were liable
to go to state prison for 20 years, and that each town had men on the
lookout to see that shows didn't advertise what they didn't carry out.
Pa and the managers held a consultation, and couldn't find that we
advertised anything that we didn't have, except the ourang outang that
we took on at New York, which eats and dresses like a man, 'cause that
animal got whooping cough in Delaware and had to be sent to a hospital,
but we heard he was well again and would join the show in a week.
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