Under the big top

Snow is flying. It is early March, and cold. Hardly what one would call “circus” weather, yet there under the train sheds it stands at the end of a south-bound passenger train,...

Once upon a time, there was an elephant which objected to going into a cage. Because of that fact, a million dollars or so was made, and he ceased to be “just an elephant.” He f...

Nearly everything else in the world has changed. In the last fifty years we’ve had a topsy-turvy affair of progress and education, sophistication, and advancement. Everything ha...

Back in my kidhood days, when, as a runaway youngster, I was achieving a life ambition—and five dollars a week—as “the clowns” of a tatterdemalion little circus which clattered...

Personality, as has been remarked before, has its part in the animal kingdom, just as with the human family. The hyena is a sneak, an animal tramp, ready to seize upon that whic...

Perhaps at some time in your life you’ve stood in front of a lion’s cage at a circus, watching the pacing beast within and speculating upon what is happening in the mind of the...

I once saw a picture in strange surroundings. It was “The Madonna and Child”, tacked in a lion’s den by a bent old keeper who had cut it from a magazine and posted it there. Ben...

“Congo”, a giant Koolakamba of the ape family, had been on a rampage for hours. And with Congo that meant trouble. Seven feet tall, measuring from his funny, crooked feet to his...

A long time ago, when I was a yellow-haired boy—I’m bald and a bit old now—the Wild West Show of Buffalo Bill came to town, and I was one of those lucky persons who could set th...

Every woman says it sooner or later, that is, every woman who goes to a circus. High upon the close-packed tiers of seats she sits, watching the white, sleek ring horses or “ros...

When Happy Brandon, our concession owner, came home from the mud and muck and variegated troubles of a combat division’s lot in the Big Muss, I noticed that there was no differe...