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Sunday Herald. June 26th.

THE SUNDAY HERALD, CHICAGO, JUNE 25.

BUFFALO BILL'S SHOW.

UNIQUE AMONG ENTERTAINMENTS.

"Rough Riders of the World," With Characteristic National Scenes From Many Countries - Col. Cody's Little Grand-daughter and Her View of the Fair.

Have you ever seen Buffalo Bill's wild west show? No? Then you have one of he rarest pleasures on earth still in store for you. It isn't a show merely. It isn't a cricus. It is in no sense an aggretion of curios. But it is the gathering together in one sweep the rough activities of 5,000 years. It is the strength, the virility, the physical prowess, the speed and the daring of forceful man in all the races from Abraham to Sheridan.

The company is a rather large one. There are perhaps 500 men and women in the em-

ply of the management, and the exhibition they submit for the approval of thousands daily is a peculiarly interesting one. In the first place there are a good many interesting things up and down the plaza outside the amphitheater along which the tents and cabins of the various performers are ranged. And the avenues sepearating the rows of dwellings are crowded all day with visitors who are interested in the personal side of the life they see illustrated within the ring. Indians from the western plains, cossacks from other plains of the far-away east, French, German and English soldiers from the roughest military service in the world, all have their homes here, and all are willing to receive the addresses of friends and to tell them what they can of the homely side of life.

There is Little Johnny Burke No-neck, a Sioux lad who was found just alive after the battle of Wounded Knee, and who has been adopted by the gallant Major Burke, and brought here with his people after a tour almost around the world. There is a cossack prince from the land of the czar, who has the permission of his master to come here and show to western eyes a glimpse of vigor from the east. There are chiefs of the Sioux nation, expert rifle shots, both of men and women, and all about them are collected the accoutrements of life s they lvie it at home.

There is the kitchen and the great dining tents, presided over by Billy Langan, whose family requires 180 dozens of eggs at a meal, and other good in proportion; dark little Jose, from Mexico, who quit tring to ride bucking bronchos and turned his attention to hauling wood as a safer occupation. Jose came back to the show, limping from an injury received by falling under his load. He says he will ride all the bucking horses in the country before he will go to hauling wood again. "A mana know whata horse going to do," he says. "Don't knowa noting 'bouta load of wood."

But the show, after all, is inside, Let me tell you about it. A great square of ground inclosed on three sides by rising tiers of seats; a grand stand across the south end, opposed at the north by a stretch of stage scenery representing mountains and valley land. That is the theater. A "lecturer" perched on a pedestal in the near foreground tells the number exactly as you learn it from your programme at the play. The cowboy band at the back of the grand stand begins a rattling melody. There are

no Wagner strains in this cowboy band. It plays what the people want to hear. Its leader does not believe in giving people music that is distastful, as he might if music were medicine. There is a moment of silence and then the lecturer announces the entrance of the American Indians. The great gate at the northern end of the plaza opens and a hundred wild Indians gallop wildly into the quadrangle. The show has begun.

Yelling, leaning wagerly forward, lashing their steeds with short and harmless whips, sitting with naked legs close to the naked back of the horse, these wild men of the plains, vanishing remnant of a singular race, sweep past the eyes of the spectators, and take up position in line facing the stand. They sit there at characteristic rest. Their feet are drawn up here and there and rested on the backs of their horses. The animal is so much a part of themselves that they trat them as you would a couch, or a divan, or the broad bosom of the welcoming ground. There is another hoarse announcement from the lecturer - which you cannot understand - and out of the distant gate comes a company of French cavalry.

They are heavier men in appearance. Their horses are certainly larger, and they

run more ponderously. But it is a run. There is a stir and a thrill in the sight of that rushing company. It gives one a sense of force and freedom that nothing else cna impart. The gallop of a body of horses like a wonderful feat of human strength, goes down to the basis of man and stirs that spirit his soberer life has almost covered up. Then to the blatant air of "Die Wacht am Rhein," comes the German cavalry. They, too, sweep in splendid company front the length of the quadrangle, wheel to the left and salute you as they pass the grand stand, and then take up their position just in front og the French who preceded them.

Then cam the Mexicans, riding like centaurs, yelling like demons, clanking all the silver adoenments of their stange apparrel, sweeping low as they pass you, and ranging just in front of the Germans, armed and at rest. Then the cowboys, with Frank Hammitt in the lead - king of riders, and sturdiest of men. He sits his horse like a king on his throne. THere is not a jar of the shoulders, not a mobement of the hips. The man is part of the horse till the ride is done. There are English lancers, eith a gallant color bearer in the lead. And they ride to a goos old English air, bit the difference between their riding and that of the cowboys, is the difference between music and scolding.

Cossacks follow, standing in the stirrups, wabing, shouting, twirling their guns - a dangerous crowd they seem as they take their position in the rapidly forming body of horsemen. And then come the Arabs, their long cloaks flying, their little horses bending low and fanning the earth with their sharp little hoofs. THey are like a leaf from "Aladdin." They are like a dream from Asia. There is an American girl alone - an

American girl who can tell you something of this country you call your home. She has lived her life in the wider west, and her friends are the mountains. She passes like a flash, but she helps her horse as he wheels about and faces you.

Buffalo Bill's Granddaughter.

And then, with a blare of trumpets and the noise of much shouting, comes the American cavalry from the distant entrance way. A pretty incident was added the day I visited the show. In the box below me sat Mrs. Cody, wife of Buffalo Bill, with her daughter and her daughter's daughter - the latter a bright little child of about 5 years. The little one had kept her place in the box till the Americans were heralded, and as the strains of "The Star Spangled Banner" welcomed the soldiers she slipped from her mother's side and began a little waltz of her own up and down the passageway be

tween the boxes. She held her hands above her head and pirouetted gracefully down and back, careless of the thousnads who had turned for the moment from the field to watch her dancing - and then darted back to her mother with a laugh of delight.

With a laugh of delight that was succeeded in a moment by a scream of pleasure and a baby salute from two white hands. For here was Buffalo Bill. He rode from the distant gate toward us, not with the wild rush of common men, but with the graceful movement of a master whose eminense was firm. His horse is the gift of General Miles - a splendid animal, as proud of his master as a horse can be, and as clean of limb as an Arab barb. There is a salvo of cheers as the king of scouts describes his circle, bowing to the left and right, then pausing for a moment here at our feet to lift his hat and smile his acknowledgments of our hearty welcome.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he says - and somehow it doesn't for a moment seem the formal address of a showman. "Ladies and gentlemen, we welcome you to this congress of nations, and "- but you lose the words there, for the cheers have not died out. But you catch in strong tones. "Rough riders of the world!" and the wide slouch hat is returned to the head as the handsome horse backs away from the stand and takes his position at the front of the solid square. The little grandchild of the leaders has never seen him at the head of his men. She is standing on her chair, clapping her hands and calling a rapturous greeting. The band is playing its swiftest music. Before you, in successive stages, rest the

links of that chain which begins with the horsemen of Araby and connects every race in every clime, ending with this group of Indians who seem born for the saddle and the rein.

Sure Shot Annie Oakley.

There is a swift breaking of ranks and the kaledioscopic marching and countermarching of the galloping horsemen back and forth before you till they vanish at last in the mimic mountains at the north of the ground. Annie Oakley, a girl who has made herself famous with the rifle, has suddenly appeared. No one knows where she came from, but here she is, while the last "rough rider" is still in sight, and there are her guns. A couple of young men have arranged her traps, and she bows to the grand stand, then turns to shoot. She makes a pleasant picture down there in the great quadrangle. She weats a short skirt, a tight-fitting costume, a cowboy hat, and the entire buckskin appearance of her garments adds to the picture of the fontier lass.

She is wonderfully accurate, breaking composition balls with an almost unerring accuracy. Two, three, four balls are thrown

into the air at one time and she breaks them, changing her double-barreled gun in the midst of the feat. And she is determined. She places her rifle on the ground

and walks back come twenty feet. The trap is sprung and she runs forward, snatches up the gun and fires. She is trying to break both balls. But the time is too short, and she misses one. She tries it again and again. It seems beyond the posisble. But she does it at last, and the whole great audience repays her with generous cheers. When she has done she bows widely to the audience and runs like a deer across the hundred yards of space to the flies. Every movement in that dash across the square is certiicate to the value of the school in which she has learned.

Postman of the Plains.

The pony express rider comes like a hint from a forgotten book. Right before you, and at the farthest point in the quadrangle, stands by a pony, saddled ready for the road, and held by a stableman. The carrier of the mail, that postman of the plains, rides at top speed from his shelter behind the mimic hills, flies like a swallow around the western border the grounds, leans far over as he rounds the sharp corner, and dashes with topmost speed right up to the standing horse at the station. Before he has reached that standing horse the rider has leaped to the ground. He seems only to have touched the sod when he bounds again into the air and

grasps the horn of the saddle on the waiting horse. But that horse is off like the wind. The rider has not yet mounted. How he clings to the side of the beast, how he rises at length till he canget astride, how he settles himself, mail bags in hand, and stoops to urge the pony to greater speed - all these are marvels. They do not seem marvels while you read of them. But if you look on it you see the work which 2,000 miles of desert and 10,000 Indians made necessary thirty and even twenty years ago. Arrived at the farther station the changing of horses is as instantly done, and again the rider is away on a fresh steed. I had forgotten the pony express rider. This passage in the show brought him back.

And it was an index. The fuller chapter was that age when "movers" went over the western plains in slow wagons, their all colleeted in the little space behind them, their hopes fixed on the distant gold fields, or the equally impossible valleys where farms should gladden them. Two wagons of this kind came slowly out of the hills and moved about the square. The scout went before them. Their cattle and dogs followed behind. There were tired woman and puzzeled men in the front of the wagon. You could see the look of weariness, the proof of desolate wastes passed over, in every feature of their faces.

And the Indians attacked them. Flying upon them like a swarm of locusts, shooting, yelling, riding in a hundred different directions at once, puzzling the eye and frightening the heart, those scoutages of the plains had surrounded the emigrant train. Of course we knew it was all a play. We knew nobody would be killed. We knew the rescue party would arrive on time, and that all would be well. There is no thought of peril. But the picture is a good one. While you are not troubled, you are reminded of the times when this was terribly, fearfully real. And it is a chapter not so very far distant even to-day that it has lost its human interest.

Dance of the Dervish Man.

There was a very pretty picture that might have been missed in the rush of Buffalo Bill and his resuers. Bessie Farrell, who had been riding with the train in the character of a daughter of the emigrants, had retreated behind one of the wagons, and sat there, as a terrified maiden might, till the battle was done and the Indians rode away in a cloud of dust and to the pattering beat of a hundred bullets. It was only a detail in the picture, but it added to and perfected what was already an accurate representation.

There was an exhibition of riding and weapon handling by the Arabs. They are wonderful horsemen, and as clearly possessed of the waste lands of the east as the Indians are of those in the west. But it is an older possession, a title that seems ancient in every movement of these its men. For the dervish was among them. He stepped before his fellows when the first came on the ground, took his position on the little platform of wood, perhaps eight feet square, put out his arms and swung around in a slow, measured motion that was never for an instant varied through the thirty minutes of their exercise. How he maintained his poise, with what art he preserved his place, by what skill be revolved then unvarying while they went forward with acrobatic performances, no one can know. But he was the one wonderful figure in the whole weird act.

Johnny Baker presents an exhibition of fancy shooting. He is good, but not more so than is Miss Oakley, and while he was applauded he was not so successful in his efforts as was the girl. Then the Mexicans showed how the laries is thrown, while other riders illustrated the use of the boias as a weapon both offense and defense. Miss Oakley and Miss Warrell rode a race that was by no means came. One feature of the show is the absence of the hippodrome. There is an earnestness, a life and spirit in every act which lends it an additional charm. Which young lady had the honor of winning makes no difference. That they both rode well and that their ponies did all they could is the only point of interest in the matter. And of tha thtere was no shadow of doubt.

Buffalo Bill gave an exhibition of glass ball breaking while riding full tilt on his excellent horse. Then there was a buffalo hunt with real, live buffalos who ranged and ran as if at their home in the plains. There was an Indian attack at a settler's house, the surprise, the fight, the retreat, and then the grand finale of all the "rough riders," and the show was done.

There need be no comment on the show. It is what it pretends to be. There is not an act from first to last but is instinct with life, and none but is filled with interest from the opening to the close of the day.