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His book abounds in tall tales, wreaths of reminiscence, diverting digressions. Of Annie Oakley, famed deadshot of Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, he records that she was extremely stingy, never took so much as a beer unless someone else paid for it; that the bullets she used in her act were explosive, scattered the shot so that misses were rare. Death Valley Scotty, broncobuster, was such a glutton for chocolate creams that he ate them while his mount was cutting capers. Buffalo Bill stuck religiously to his temperance pledge except in his native State of Nebraska: there all bets were off, and the show, taking its cue from him, went really wild. Cody and his equally temperamental manager, "Arizona John" Burke, sometimes had differences. Cody once wired him: IF YOU WANT TO REMAIN WITH THIS SHOW YOU MUST OBEY MY ORDERS. To which Burke replied collect: WHO THE HELL EVER TOLD YOU I WANTED TO REMAIN WITH YOUR SHOW BRING OUT THE BAND LET IT PLAY HAIL TO THE CHIEF ITS A MATTER OF RECORD THAT COLUMBUS WAS PUT IN CHAINS AFTER DISCOVERING AMERICA AND THAT THE JEWS CRUCIFIED AN AWFULLY GOOD MAN.
The days of the circus' death-defying stunts, as the days of its parades down Main Street, are over. Both are now an unnecessary complication of an already complicated routine. Since Ringling's and Barnum & Bailey's have combined, such competitive stunts are no longer demanded. Fellows admits that accidents still happen under the big top, but on no such scale as in the dangerous days of looping automobiles and diving bicycles. Such ' hair-raising numbers as Clyde Beatty's animal-training act are not popular with all members of the audience, and present knotty transportation difficulties. But the elephants, the trapezists, the trick riding, the clowns are hardy perennials. Of the professional clowns Fellows remembers, one filled in the winters at osteopathy, one was a patent lawyer. Everywhere the circus goes, says Fellows, local bankers, merchants, doctors want to act as a clown for one show. "To accommodate them we keep several extra costumes on hand."
Some publicity stunts that Pressagent Fellows tells about: sending an elephant to lay a wreath on a dead elephant's monument; staging the real wedding of a clown in Madison Square Garden; putting up a gorilla at Manhattan's McAlpin Hotel. One stunt he denies any connection with was plumping the midget (Lia Graf) on J. P. Morgan's knee. Of circus freaks in general Fellows writes with friendly sympathy. He recalls one Jonathan R. Bass, an ossified man: "He seemed well informed, was fond of conversation, and was an atheist." Once a certain fire-eating man fell in love with the bearded lady, whose place was next his on the sideshow platform. When she spurned him, his love turned to hate. At the next show he suddenly shot his flaming breath at her, singed her precious beard.