d the
Proprietor, laughing, as he led the way to the cafe table. "But she
makes a specialty of the larger species."

"This matter of specialties seems to run through every branch of the
show business," said the Press Agent as they took their seats at the
table. "I ran a dime museum in St. Louis a few years ago--in those days
there was lots of money in it--and the freaks would never stand for any
change in their billing. We used to have a fresh lot sent on by our New
York agent every two weeks, and one Monday morning when I went down to
look over the new arrivals, I knew that he had been up against the demon
Rum, when he engaged such a tough looking bunch. The alleged fat woman
looked as if she was wasting away with consumption, and the bearded lady
had a way of absentmindedly humming the popular airs in a bass voice
which gave the whole snap away. There was one likely looking girl and
when I asked her what she was she told me she was the web-footed lady
and showed me her feet, which had little pieces of skin growing between
the toes.

"I knew that wasn't good enough, so I told her she was mistaken; that
she was a Circassian beauty, and I gave her a wig and the fixings and
put her on the platform. But say, would you believe it? She was so mad
and embarrassed by the change in her stunt that when the lecturer was
calling attention to her blond beauty, she would blush until she looked
like an Indian Princess, and every time he turned his back she would
take off her shoes and wiggle her toes at the audience to show what she
really was.

[Illustration: _"Things which Nature never intended them to do."_]

"It was up to us to get some real attraction to tide over the time until
our agent should get sober and send us another bunch of freaks, so
Merritt, who was my partner, and myself hunted up a big buck nigger and
made a deal with him to go on as a 'Wild Man.' We ripped up a hair
mattress and glued the contents onto him, and wired a couple of big
tusks to his teeth, and with an iron collar around his neck and a log
chain around his waist he was as good an imitation as was ever faked. We
put him in a big cage which we had used the week before for a mangy old
lion; one of the five hundred or so 'Wallace the Untamables' which were
touring the country, and Merritt taught him to howl like a steam
calliope.

"We called him 'Fuzzy Wuzzy, the Terrible Man-Eating Cannibal,' which
was a waste of words, but Merritt had language to b