World’s Biggest Circus.

Hokitika Guardian, 26 June 1922, Page 1

World’s Biggest Circus.

NEW TORE. When “llio biggest show on earth” arrives New York admits that spring is here. The biggest show is the cirrus. And it is such a circus this year as the world lias never seen. It takes something like 500 people to present it, and about 5,000 folk go every afternoon to .see 1 it and another 5,000 every night. It made its way into New York about two in the morning when there was no traffic, and Santa Claus was never awaited with more eagerness than the circus procession down Madison-avenue. It is safe to say no small boy or girl closed an eyelid that night. Imagine having elephants, lions, tigers, .yaks, giraffes, sacred - cattle, camels monkeys, and Polar hears, scores and scores of them, passing under your very window—plump! plump! plump! shuffle, clatter, and snarl! The elephants marching stolidly along some 40 of them, the horses prancing, the camels swinging, and, from their gaudily painted wagons, the wild beasts, excited and angry, sending furious calls out into the darkness. It took n small army of workmen to get the circus into the Madison-square Carden, where it stays for a month, and it took a week to arrange and rehearse the different nets. One thinks of a circus as a ring and a platform where one watches agile acrobats and riders, a clown or two, and sonic trained animals.

At tilt biggest show on earth there are four rings and three platforms, and there arc performances on and in them all at one and the same time.

It would take seven pairs of eyes to sec everything that goes on ; but the New Yorker likes being dazzled and bewildered.

lie likes seeing lions in one ring, tigers in another, leopards and Polar bears in the others, all doing their tricks, reluctantly, but at the same time.

He likes having fifty clowns instead of two, forty performing elephants, sixtv trained horses.

There are no bedraggled costumes, no elderly-looking lady hare-back riders, no tawdry trimmings at the New 5 ork circus. Kvcrything is new and glistening and artistic. Dozens of pretty women, beautifully diessed, do marvellous feats on the trapeze or on a rope in mid-air or with wild animals or tame ones, but, whatever taste they brought with them from Germany. France, Austria, Russia (and they come from all over the world), they have dross to suit New York taste on their airival, and they spring gracefully into the ring with French maids or coloured servants in attendance, and throw off beautiful wraps before they begin their respective “acts.” After the performance „therc is the village of “strange people” to visit. Armless and legless prodigies, dwarfs, giants, skeletons, fat freaks, head hunters (quite mild looking savages, these), snake charmers. More thrills and shrieks of joy! I feel that the circus is typical of New York, ft is stupendous, glittering, hanging, dazzling. It brings spring in with a hound and a blare of trumpets, ft is adored. But it is terrific.