THE LOAFER IN THE STREET.

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 2111, 29 November 1880, Page 3

THE LOAFER IN THE STREET.

I was sitting in one of your editorial sanctums the other night, thinking over the all-absorbing topic of the Mayoral election, when to me enters a stranger. He politely inquired it I were the editor. I said, “ Well, no, not quite, but very close to. Though not the rose myself, I dwell handy to it." He produced a roll of papers. This is a proceeding 1 can’t abear. You can never tell what rolls of papers may lead to. “ Excuse me, gentle sir,” I said, in a tremulous tone, “ is this poetry you bring, or the ravings of a 1 Constant Reader ’ with a grievance ?” He shook his head. “ Don’t tell me,” I almost screamed, “ that you are one more of the Reaper and Binder community ? Give me some assurance that that roll of papers has no reference to string binders, adjustable reels, or things of that sort.” “No,” said the visitor, “ my business ain’t anything of that sort. I represent Mr W. W. Coles’ Circus, a leviathanatio entertainment, one which, in its united vastness, is the biggest and the best under the cerulean firmament of heaven. As I shall have the pleasure of showing you presently, it is the only show on this earth possessing features exclusively its own. I will endeavour to give you some slight idea of the treat in store for the Christchurch people j but it will be only a very faint one, for the most eloquent orator would find language inadequate to describe ou' show. It is an ideality of originalities. It is really past description. But I will give you a few items that may already have some of those pleasures of anticipation which will be next week excelled a hundredfold by the gorgeous, the entrancing, the bewildering reality. Our menagerie consists of fifteen cages of animals, amassed with much trouble and at incalculable expense from all quarters of the globe. The silent depths of the Amazon forest, the icy wilds of the Arctic circle, the sands of Afrio’s burning shore, the intricacies of India’s coral strand, have been rummedged, if I may be allowed the expression, to supply an appreciative colonial audience with the highest toned creatures that run, fly or swim. Our best holts in the menagerie we reckon to be our small giraffe, presented to the show by .Quambasticko, the present illustrious reigning sovereign of the Moontaina of the Moon, also a small hippopotamus, possessing to the fullest extent the amphibious qualities peculiar to hie race, and the two horned rhino. We call him rhino partly for briefness and partly as suggestive of his money-drawing abilities. I must not forget the sea lions, who, apart from the interest attached to them from their singularity of appearance, have proved immensely useful to the lower orders as an example of the happiness and benefits of cleanliness. The African lions are no slouch either, being thoroughly up in their business as monarohs of the forest and princes of the glade. Our aviary is not the least interesting feature of a section in a show where everything astounds even the most confirmed circus habitue A collection of birds such as ours would, with their radiant plumage, attract notice anywhere, but with these, as in all other sections of this show, former exhibitions have been improved on. Acting on the well-known reasoning powers—instinct if you will—of the Toucan and the Cockatoo, our trainer has taught these birds to group themselves almost imperceptibly os it were in a series of graceful tableaux which delight the eye and impart a delicious feeling to the senses of the moat uneducated. Nor must I forget the Happy Family, a cage, if one can use such a harsh term, where creatures of the most antagonistic tastes reside together in exquisite harmony. I refrain from pointing out at any length the many beautiful moral lessons to be deduced from an inspection of this feature, but I can truthfully say that the juxtaposition of the oat, the rat, and the monkey and other ferce, in themselves, as it were, makes the “ happy family ” a poem in itself. To sum up, if such a thing were possible, our mammoth collection of animals, I may say, as illustrating its superiority numerically over that possessed by Messrs Cooper and Bailey, that those gentlemen paid for the carriage by sea of their animals £2500, while our account with the Shipping Company was £4OOO. To come to the circus proper, I should say—but of course this is entirely a matter of taste —that the trained stallions are the thing that will hog your public. Their unanimity, their grace, their immense sagacity, give visitors an impression of the subtle powers of understanding possessed by the equine race never be.oro thoroughly experienced. Their feats, sir, I assure you, dwarf into utter insignificance all previous performances. Ladies, you say. Of course we have. The very best —daring, brilliant, unique, and beautiful. Our Pad and Bareback equitation is not to bo beaten, or indeed equalled, in the world. Our horsemen, too, are not to be surpassed. Look at O’Dale, the most peerleeseat bare • backist in all creation. Look at Campbell, the champion battoute leaper of the world, who can accomplish the double and single somersault over more horses, elephants, camels, &a., than any man in the profession, or I may add out of it. Then wo have the Livingstone Brothers, who have justly earned the appropriate title of “ Flying men of the air.” We have Herr Eneeland, the peerless spring board leaper and voltigenr, and the horizontal bar gives Dunbar and Reno a ohance to exhibit feats that strike every visitor with the dumbness of astonishment. You say you haven't seen a good clown for thirty years. Ah ! wait till you see Tom Mclntyre, jester, conversationalist and clown, modest and brilliant, wit and repartee without vulgarity, satirical without offence, felicitous in joke, apt in illustration, pointed in morals, and a veriti able genius in the tented temple of Momus. , The Comical Pico, the prince of motleys.

sparkling in repartee, with a penchant towards the oomique and grotesque. At one moment the unbidden tear rushes freely to the trembling eyelid. At another the diaphragm is distended with laughter, which even St. Antony could not under the circumstances control. Another feature I think, from its originality alone I should have alluded to before, is the draft of talented Red Mon accompanying our colossal pavilion. No such opportunity has ever before been offered to a New Zealand community of seeing, as one may say, the Red Indian of the prairies in his native lair. There he is, the same noble, high souled savage as he was when Mr Fennimore Cooper smacked him straight before the public as TJneas, in “The Last of the Mohicans.” A halo of romance surrounds him. Always stoical, he retains his surroundings even in those colonies. Ho throws around those flashes of brilliant silence for which his now rapidly departing racejhave been ever so remarkable, and of our Comanche Indians I may say that we have brought them to that pitch that their foot are to all appearance ever on their native heaths, and occasionally when in the neighbourhood of an hotel their bodies are too. They are big are our Indians. They are full of interest, and as there seems some doubt about their habits, I may add they have no more prejudices about a drink than you or me. At a risk of taking up a moment more of your valuable time (here of course I bowed politely on your behalf), I must tell you that the lighting of the colossal canopy is and always has been considered a gigantic feature in our unrivalled entertainment, I could dwell on our camels and a heap of other curiosities I have not had time to introduce to you ; but the lighting of our entertainment is unique—unique! I tell you, boss. Picture to yourself, if you can, a 20-horse power engine 20,000yds of wire insulated by Brush Dynamos Patent, feeding eighteen electric burners, any one of which would blind the proverbial eye of the haughty eagle. Picture to yourself a light which makes the arena far and near as light as the brightest day. A light which outrivals the CHAINED LIGHTNING’S RESPLENDENT GLARE, and you may have some idea of what we give instead of the detestable naptha formerly inseparable from the classic sands of the arena. One word more. I won’t keep you. We don’t allow fellows of the lower sort to come around peddling. It’s against all good sense to have a fellow planking a sowt basket of fruit on a lady’s knee while he waits for change. We have passed that generation out, and now I’m off. My name’s Campbell, I’ll call again soon, and don’t forget we open down by old Coker’s on Wednesday Bth.” And he went. Ho passed out with a step as fluent as his tongue. A nice man—a good tongue roller, but forgetful. He omitted to leave mo a pass. This may remind him.