CIRCUS DAYS 15 



we bought the Walter L. Main show, which con- 

 sisted of nothing more than a tent and some seats. 

 We had no animals but we hired performers and 

 started out on the road. 



For one week we had luck and took in money; 

 then came nine days of rain. The tent absorbed 

 tons of water, and we had no way of drying it and 

 preventing mildew. It was so heavy that the can- 

 vas-man could scarcely handle it. 



At Springfield I went out to the lot and found 

 Fitzgerald there ; he just stood there, looking at the 

 wet canvas spread out on the ground with the rain 

 beating down on it. The canvas-men had given up 

 the tent was too heavy to hoist. That was the end 

 of my only adventure as a circus-owner. 



The big shows carried an extra tent to meet 

 emergencies, but we couldn't have one, of course. 

 The rain had beaten us to a finish. Even if we 

 could have raised our tent, we should have had 

 no audience, and we weren't well enough supplied 

 with money to follow Bailey's idea of giving a 

 performance if there were only two persons there to 

 see it. Our "Greatest Show in the World" was sunk 

 in an Illinois mud-puddle. 



In later years I have stood sponsor for many of 

 the shows and small circuses that visited Singapore. 

 One I well remember belonged to an old friend, 

 A. Bert Wilison of Sydney, Australia, who had 

 been with the advance at the time I was with R. W. 

 Fryer's Circus. He came with his show from Cal- 



