DOI Artikel:
Crackanthorpe, Hubert: Bread and the circus
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.27806#0243
By Hubert Crackanthorpe 239
with his wizened, wrinkled forehead, his tattered, worn-out ears,
and weak, sunken eyes, for ever wearily winking with the fatigue
of his hundred and twenty summers, submitting without a murmur
to the buffetings of his coquettish granddaughter, “Ida”; “Rose,”
a fat, gluttonous, middle-aged dame, and “ Palm,” her husband,
with his great indolently humorous face—an entirely respectable
bourgeois menage ; “ Nick,” the youngster, always squealing and
stealing the hay ; “ Tim,” the monster elephant, restlessly rolling
his vicious white-rimmed eye (he had killed a man some six
months ago) ; impatient, irascible, and sullenly watchful of his
little wife “Tiny,” the beauty of the band, jealously marching by
her side on the road, with his trunk around her neck, and in the
evenings, rumbling to himself with pride, as he scraped her down
with the jagged edge of an old condensed-milk tin.
Midday—The post had just come in. The manager, a freckled,
sandy-haired young man, was giving out the letters in the dressing-
room, sitting swinging his long legs on an elephant-tub, with his
hat jammed tight on the back of his head. One by one the men
came forward ; some sheepishly, some jauntily, some with tremu-
lous eagerness. And the more illiterate ones remained loitering
at the mouth of the tent, hesitatingly fingering their envelopes,
curiously revolving them, trying to decipher the post-marks.
Sam Giddens, the clown, a bald, thick-set, elderly gentleman,
adjusted his gold-rimmed spectacles, and plunged into a copy of the
Era. Quito, the jockey, and the two tumbling boys were dis-
cussing the incidents of the journey.
“ ’E got me doun, smashed my ’at in, and tore my coat a’most
off my back,” Tommy was explaining.
The Yellow Book—Yol. VII. o What,
with his wizened, wrinkled forehead, his tattered, worn-out ears,
and weak, sunken eyes, for ever wearily winking with the fatigue
of his hundred and twenty summers, submitting without a murmur
to the buffetings of his coquettish granddaughter, “Ida”; “Rose,”
a fat, gluttonous, middle-aged dame, and “ Palm,” her husband,
with his great indolently humorous face—an entirely respectable
bourgeois menage ; “ Nick,” the youngster, always squealing and
stealing the hay ; “ Tim,” the monster elephant, restlessly rolling
his vicious white-rimmed eye (he had killed a man some six
months ago) ; impatient, irascible, and sullenly watchful of his
little wife “Tiny,” the beauty of the band, jealously marching by
her side on the road, with his trunk around her neck, and in the
evenings, rumbling to himself with pride, as he scraped her down
with the jagged edge of an old condensed-milk tin.
Midday—The post had just come in. The manager, a freckled,
sandy-haired young man, was giving out the letters in the dressing-
room, sitting swinging his long legs on an elephant-tub, with his
hat jammed tight on the back of his head. One by one the men
came forward ; some sheepishly, some jauntily, some with tremu-
lous eagerness. And the more illiterate ones remained loitering
at the mouth of the tent, hesitatingly fingering their envelopes,
curiously revolving them, trying to decipher the post-marks.
Sam Giddens, the clown, a bald, thick-set, elderly gentleman,
adjusted his gold-rimmed spectacles, and plunged into a copy of the
Era. Quito, the jockey, and the two tumbling boys were dis-
cussing the incidents of the journey.
“ ’E got me doun, smashed my ’at in, and tore my coat a’most
off my back,” Tommy was explaining.
The Yellow Book—Yol. VII. o What,