"They saw the elephants lie right down, and had a laugh with every clown."

A firsthand account of the Barnum & Bailey Circus that was allegedly written by a 10-year-old schoolboy–but probably was penned by one of Phineas Taylor’s lackeys–was published in the April 28, 1897 Brooklyn Daily Eagle. An excerpt:

“A school boy who enjoyed last night’s performance of the Barnum & Bailey show sends the following description to the Eagle:

To the Editor of the Brooklyn Eagle:

Despite the gale outside the tent, some 20,000 people went with peanuts primed and eyes aglow, to see the great and only show. First baby camel met their eye and then the lady ten feet high, beside the smallest man on earth, provoked much inconsiderate mirth. The animals next, both caged and tied, were each and every one espied; the side show freaks and platforms, too, were passed before the public view, and then the bugles tooted loud, and to the ring sides rushed the crowd. They tried to watch three rings at one, and follow everything there done; but though they couldn’t quite succeed, they saw a lot of things indeed. They saw the elephants lie right down, and had a laugh with every clown; and watched the goats roll around the ring on a ball as easy as anything, and shooed the dove that rode the wheel and heard the pig’s ‘mamma’ appeal, and held their breath while in the air the slack rope walker combed his hair and trapeze artists swung and jumped, till finally into the net they plumped; and saw the ball roll up the spire, with a man inside to push it higher, and cheered the dog that kicked the ball with the tip of his nose and heard the fall of the clown who tried to stand on his head, but landed in a heap instead, and followed the man with the face so big that he scared the clown with the talking pig, and laughed at the rollicking monkey race, and the dogs that joined in the nightly chase, and watched the Jap shin up the pole and slide to the ground on his slippery sole, and hurrahed for the girl on the milk white steed who stuck to his back in spite of his speed, and marked the time for the horse quadrille and the juggler eyed with a creeping chill as he dallied with carving knives and things in one of the three entrancing rings. The same old circus? Well, hardly true–the same old show, with everything new.

Brooklyn, April 8, 1897

SCHOOL BOY.”