Page:The Tattooed Countess (1924).pdf/113

 there is no place to stow them, but which in the country are carefully preserved until the owner dies. On the rough pine inner walls of this barn it had been the pleasure of a former coachman to paste posters of bygone circuses, theatrical show-bills, portraits of race-horses and prize-fighters. There were lithographs of Louise Montague, Forepaugh's $25,000 beauty, James O'Neill exclaiming, The World is Mine! Frank Mayo as Davy Crockett, Janauschek as Meg Merrilies, Minnie Maddern in Fogg's Ferry, Emma Abbott as Yum Yum (a rôle affording her so few vocal opportunities that she had added to them the Lullaby from Erminie), the Hanlon Brothers in Le Voyage en Suisse, Rhea as Josephine, Empress of the French, Maggie Mitchell in The Little Maverick, Helena Modjeska as Rosalind, Maud S., John L. Sullivan, and many others.

Some years back, Gareth had annexed the hay-loft for his own purposes. For a time, while the young people of his neighbourhood still interested him, it had been the scene of "shows," wild west and otherwise, to which the infant sisters of the performers had paid pins or pennies as entrance fee to assist as spectators while Chet Porter, the son of a local judge, chinned himself or hung by his calves from the bar of a trapeze. Occasionally, too, it had been the privilege of these fortunate juveniles to witness Bill Munger in a cage with a bear-rug carefully pinned about him. These earlier