ording to the programme) will change itself
into a fiery sword and shield. The end of this whip will sting as a
rattlesnake, flash as lightning, shoot as a thunderbolt, and keep at a
proper distance the enraged monster, who vainly roars and tries to
jump on the artist. This is not the end yet: sixteen-year-old Orso, an
"American Hercules," born of a white father and Indian mother, will
carry around six people, three on each shoulder; besides this, the
management offers one hundred dollars to any man, regardless of color,
who can throw Orso in a wrestling match. A rumor arose in Anaheim that
from the mountains of San Bernardino comes for this purpose the
"Grizzly Killer," a hunter who was celebrated for his bravery and
strength, and who, since California was settled, was the first man who
attacked these great bears single-handed and armed only with a knife.
It is the probable victory of the "Grizzly Killer" over the
sixteen-year-old athlete of the circus that highly excites the minds
of the males of Anaheim, because if Orso, who until now, from the
Atlantic to the Pacific, had overthrown the strongest Americans, will
be defeated, great glory will cover all California. The feminine minds
are not less excited by the following number of the programme: Orso
will carry, on a pole thirty feet high, a small fairy, the "Wonder of
the World," of which the poster says that she is the most beautiful
girl that ever lived on this earth since the beginning of the
"Christian Era." Though she is only thirteen years of age, the
management also offers one hundred dollars to every maiden, "without
regard to color of skin," who will dare to compete and wrest the palm
of beauty from this "Aerial Angel." The maidens of Anaheim, both great
and small, make grimaces on reading this, and say that it would not be
ladylike to enter such a contest. Nevertheless they gladly surrender
the comfort of their rocking chairs rather than miss the show and the
chance of seeing their childish rival, in whose beauty, in comparison
with the sisters Bimpa, for instance, none of them believed. The two
sisters Bimpa, the elder Refugio, and the younger Mercedes, sitting
gracefully in a handsome buggy, are now reading the posters; their
faces show no trace of emotion, though they feel that the eyes of
Anaheim are on them, as if supplicating them to save the honor of the
whole county, and with a patriotic pride, founded upon the conviction
that there is none more beau