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his tricks, and collecting it, but he was so continuously frostbitten that he finally moved up to a flea circus on Fourteenth Street, which had a coal stove. There, in comparative warmth and battling the fleas for pre-eminence, he practiced his delicate art. He was developing into a master juggler, but he was, he felt, at a financial stalemate. Notwithstanding the low scale paid to fleas, which were then unorganized, the circus's profits were modest, and Fields could never jockey his price above the standard ten dollars. When an opportunity came, through an impresario named Jim Fulton, to join another traveling burlesque, he snapped it up. Altogether, it was a substantial rise ; the salary was twenty-five dollars a week and was actually paid now and then when business was unusually flush.
Like the managers of most Eastern road companies, Fulton took his troupe into the Middle West. He was a man of some artistic integrity, a fact that militated in favor of Fields. Whereas, on previous hauls, the boy juggler had been required to supplement his tricks by acting in various capacities, he was now relieved of these additional duties. After one performance, in Zanesville, Ohio, when Fields was asked to fill in as the love-smitten daughter of a hardware merchant, Fulton gave it up as a bad job. As nearly as Fields could diagnose the trouble, his raucous bellowing that "I must think of my father — I must! I must!" sounded unconvincing. Also, Fulton indicated, the fake yellow curls looked odd in conjunction with Fields' nose, which, though not unlovely in this period, was recognizably masculine. Added to this, at a point in the action where the daughter had nothing much to do, being required only to stand by while her father had it out with a yarn salesman, she pulled three cigars out of her tunic and accomplished some extremely spirited sleight of hand, misplacing the scene's emphasis, in the opinion of the manager.
Of Fields' work at this time he said to a reporter, Mary B.
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