Holland A Gormley's Circus

It is the old-fashioned, one-ring circus, with a clown who can sing a gong and crack a joke as we!l as an "end man" in a minstrel show. How it recalled the days of boyhood when a circus - not one of your modern three-nng, "headachy," thundering, raüroad, and Roman chanot gort of a circus, but a genuine circus - was a great event in a boy's life ! It was actually one of the canvasses that were used in the days when circus-es traveled overland. The large pictures of Punch and Judy, of the mermaid, not very fresh, but epparently just rising from the sea, of the womau who was all head and nothing else, ar.d of the African gorilla, which excited our youthful imagination and never failed to draw our hoarded dimes, - were there before the side-show tent, all very much cracked and aging fast. There was the side-show man describing with remarkable tautology, just as he did twenty-5ve years ago, the marvels which al] corners of the earth and all parts of the sea had contributed to this "most wonderal colhction of stupendous curiosities the world had ever seen." "Here," he cries, "just as you 6ee pictured, just as you see painted upon the banners, just as you see repreeented, ycu will see them under the canvas." Modern circus methods seem to have made little impression upon "Hoüand & Gormley," whose "Great One-Ring Circus" exhibited in Ann Arbor Monday,Tuesday and Wednesday. Like some lone rémaining animal of a nearly extinct species, they serve to explain the past : they teil us what circuses were before Barnuoi and Forepaugh took to (he railroad. How hath the circus degenerated ! No longer, - except in Holland & Gormley's, - are the extraordinary jugglery, the oil Hghts, the daring trapeza without the absurd nets, the cross - bar performances, and - the clown ! The clown I that mo.-t perfect of comedians ; that prince of mirth-provokers I whose ghastly white and brilliant red, and deep wrinkles, and facial contortious and songs, and bluudering atternpts to be useful and to perform, all seemed the most exquisite fun. The circus is, - or once wa?, - the small boy's first theater, bis first glimpse of comedy. If the old clown bas not become extinct, there is some hope for the riing generation yet ! Barnum's and Forepaugh's clowns belongentirely to another race of beiDgs. There are too many of them. They would be scorned by old Dan Rice. Charles Dicken's "Mr. Sleary," vhe showman, tbought he surnmed up the whole showman philosophy to Mr. Gradgrind in these words: "People must be amuihed, Thquire, thomehow. They cau't be alwayth a working, nor yet they can't be alvvayth a learning. Make the betht of uth, not the wurtht." There is much that is "betht" that can be made of Holland & Gormley. They have not onlv the paraphernalia but the tricks and performances familiar to showmen oL a generation ago. The back riding makes one rub his eyes and try to recall sometbing that he had seeti before. These showmen "amutht" the people aod give a good entertainment for ten cents. Shade of Dan Rice, if only the price of admission had been as low as ten cents 25 years ago how much peeking under the tentg it wouid have prevented!