SIGNS AND OMENS DISCREDITED 



since have I had to put up in my temporary 

 sojourns with such horrors as German oleographs 

 and family portraits, but never before or since 

 have I beheld anything quite so morbidly grue- 

 some, regarded from a decorative point of view, 

 as this funereal array. As pointedly crude and 

 blatantly direct warnings to prepare for the 

 worst, they threw ticking death-watches and 

 tallowy winding-sheets completely in the shade. 



Yet I was practically unmoved ; with a show 

 on one's mind everything else sinks into insig- 

 nificance. A fall in the barometer, presaging 

 foul weather for the show, would weigh far more 

 heavily on my spirits than all prognostications 

 of impending dissolution put together. Now to 

 showmen with a disposition to attach undue 

 importance to portents and to render themselves 

 uncomfortable in consequence, I offer the fore- 

 going particulars with a view to easing some of 

 their fears. Nothing could have foreboded worse 

 for my future career in the Bath and West Society 

 than that prelude to my first show. Yet the 

 show itself was successful beyond anticipation, 

 and after-happenings have only given me cause 

 for thankfulness. In my childhood's days, if 

 one had been suddenly brought face to face with 

 such a collection of emblems of mortality as met 

 my gaze on the night in question, it would have 

 been regarded as a distinct warning that this world 

 would shortly be relieved of one's presence. 

 That premonition if it be so regarded came to 

 me in the year 1883 ; yet here I am in 1918 still 

 alive and in harness. So much for signs and 

 omens and superstitions generally. 



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