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 It was often necessary for the showmen to have their breakfast at three o'clock in the morning, and this, as the reader may well imagine, made it impracticable for the keeper of the little country hotel to go to bed at all. He usually stayed up all night on a "star" occasion of this kind and cooked for his deluge of boarders. The following little incident may illustrate the situation better, perhaps, than I can tell it: We had just hired a man to travel with our wagons. He was a "green" hand; but he felt it necessary, of course, to fill the proprietor of the little hotel where we stopped with an appreciation of a showman's importance. He got up about two o'clock to attend to the horses. As he passed out he came upon the hotel keeper who, with sleeves rolled up, was working for all he was worth.

The new attaché stretched himself, yawned and said: "I'll tell you what, this is the last season that I'm goin' to travel with a show." "Yes," replied the other, "I guess&mdash;next to keeping a tavern&mdash;the circus business is about the hardest goin'."

We once had with our show a woman whom we were exhibiting for her immense size. To