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54

While I was absent from my show my manager once engaged two boys with heads little larger than teacups; one of them had a club foot and had some little claim to intelligence. Our people had painted them to look like savages, and they were exhibited as the "Aztec Children." One day when the lecturer was expatiating upon these remarkable children a burlo countryman shouted:

"Hello, John Evans, I know you; I worked in the harvest field with you many a day; oh, you can't fool me."

The "Aztec child" had been taught to make no reply to anything said to him, and the lecturer paid no attention to anything said to the countryman's interruption, but the countryman was not to be put down, and once more he shouted:

"Say, Bill Evans, maybe you think I don't know that club foot; just come off, now."

The audience was greatly amused at this, and the lecturer saw that he had plenty of trouble on hand; consequently he called the countryman aside and told him that he was certainly mistaken as to the identity of the freak. "Oh, no, I ain't," replied the obdurate fellow;