The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn eBook

Then the ringmaster he see how he had been fooled, and he was the sickest ringmaster you ever see, I reckon.  Why, it was one of his own men!  He had got up that joke all out of his own head, and never let on to nobody.  Well, I felt sheepish enough to be took in so, but I wouldn’t a been in that ringmaster’s place, not for a thousand dollars.  I don’t know; there may be bullier circuses than what that one was, but I never struck them yet.  Anyways, it was plenty good enough for me; and wherever I run across it, it can have all of my custom every time.

Well, that night we had our show; but there warn’t only about twelve people there—­just enough to pay expenses.  And they laughed all the time, and that made the duke mad; and everybody left, anyway, before the show was over, but one boy which was asleep.  So the duke said these Arkansaw lunkheads couldn’t come up to Shakespeare; what they wanted was low comedy—­and maybe something ruther worse than low comedy, he reckoned.  He said he could size their style.  So next morning he got some big sheets of wrapping paper and some black paint, and drawed off some handbills, and stuck them up all over the village.  The bills said: 

At the court house!  For 3 nights only! 
The World-Renowned Tragedians
David Garrick the younger! 
And Edmund Kean the elder! 
Of the London and
Continental Theatres,
In their Thrilling Tragedy of
the king’s CAMELEOPARD,
or the Royal Nonesuch ! ! ! 
Admission 50 cents.

Then at the bottom was the biggest line of all, which said: 

Ladies and children not admitted.

“There,” says he, “if that line don’t fetch them, I don’t know Arkansaw!”

CHAPTER XXIII.

Well, all day him and the king was hard at it, rigging up a stage and a curtain and a row of candles for footlights; and that night the house was jam full of men in no time.  When the place couldn’t hold no more, the duke he quit tending door and went around the back way and come on to the stage and stood up before the curtain and made a little speech, and praised up this tragedy, and said it was the most thrillingest one that ever was; and so he went on a-bragging about the tragedy, and about Edmund Kean the Elder, which was to play the main principal part in it; and at last when he’d got everybody’s expectations up high enough, he rolled up the curtain, and the next minute the king come a-prancing out on all fours, naked; and he was painted all over, ring-streaked-and-striped, all sorts of colors, as splendid as a rainbow.  And—­but never mind the rest of his outfit; it was just wild, but it was awful funny.  The people most killed themselves laughing; and when the king got done capering and capered off behind the scenes, they roared and clapped and stormed and haw-hawed till he come back and done it over again, and after that they made him do it another time.  Well, it would make a cow laugh to see the shines that old idiot cut.