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SHOWMAN
and the battle of Santiago for the patriotic public. These battleships were the most elaborate toys imaginable—long as a rowboat, with smoke pouring from their funnels and guns that actually fired and all kinds of tricks— they blew up and caught fire and turned turtle just like real warships attending to business. The controlling gadgets were all operated by electricity and juggled by a man who sat inside, legs stretched straight out front along the keel and eyes peering out of a domino-slit in the highest turret. But, when the German put his show on in the Garden, flooding the place to make an artificial lake for his toys to maneuver in, he didn't have either the money or the experience to put it over as it deserved.
The whole layout took my fancy the way a toy train tickles a small boy. So I took over from the German and transported the show to Chicago to try it again, at Tattersall's, then the Chicago equivalent of the Garden. I advertised the thing like the end of the world and felt certain I had a winner on my hands. But then trouble began. The German's staff of assistants, the fellows who sat in the battleships and managed the gadgets, went on strike because, although I was paying the German handsomely, he was still paying them on the original scale prevailing in Europe, which was uncommonly low. The upshot was that they deserted— all but one— and I was left with nothing but a number of splendid war vessels, a tank of water, a lot of rent to pay— and no crews.
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