The Manawatu Herald. THURSDAY, MARCH 21, 1907. A DEGRADING EXHIBITION

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXIX, Issue 3762, 21 March 1907, Page 2

The Manawatu Herald. THURSDAY, MARCH 21, 1907. A DEGRADING EXHIBITION

Home papers by the last English mail record the fact that Sacco, of fasting fame, was engaged in what is described as another of his “ degrading and dangerous spectacles,” his latest feat being an attempt to do without food for fifty days. It was twenty-eight days since he entered his small wooden hut at Olympia to begin his ordeal, and he had become an emaciated wreck. ‘ ‘ Backwards and forwards across the narrow limits of his cage Sacco hobbles most of the time when he is not asleep,” says a Eondon paper. ‘‘ He was once, if his photographs are to be believed, a tall man, strong and vigorous-looking. He now seems like one in the last stages of consumption. His shoulders are bent, his cheeks painfully sunken, his forehead lined by deep furrows, and his dark eyes are mournful as those of a beaten dog.” At another time he was too weak to rise, and the management were seriously thinking of calling in a doctor and breaking down the hut. In these fasts the would-be recordbreaker is sealed up in a chamber with. a glass front, through which the morbidly-minded public can feast their eyes on him, and no one enters it till the fast is over. In Sacco’s case there was only a small grating to admit fresh air, and the atmosphere must have become appalling, for he smoked continuously. Indeed, he said that fresh air made him feel ill. All day long the public flattened their noses against the glass to gaze on the horrible spectacle of a man dying by inches. Sacco would gather up the front of his waistcoat to show them how thin he had got, and they would laugh—and pass on to see the lions next door, who at least had regular meals. ‘‘lt is a most degrading spectacle,” says the, paper, “ and is attended by so much danger that the intervention of the police will be called for unless it is stopped.” Sacco obstinately declined to break his fast

or to allow himself to be examined by a doctor, but as he had twenty days to go it is extremely improbable that he succeeded in his task. Sacco’s wife stayed day and night gazing at the man she believed to be dying, and at times shrieking out hysterically to the lookers-on to save her husband “You will ruin your husband’s reputation and career,” declared Sacco’s manager, reprovingly. “ I do not care for anything so long as his life is saved,” was Madame Sacco’s reply.