GLADSTONE AND BUFFALO BILL
A Neat Representation of the American World.
[San Francisco Alta.]
If the American public never before appreciated the amiability of Mr. GLadstone, the last forty-eight hours have changed it.
One of our fellow-citizens, Hon. William F. Cody, whose attention was drawn to the circus business by his experience in the Nebraska Legislature, has organized an Indian and cowboy show, with which he visits England. His Indians dance the corn-dance of their people, a terpsichorean performance of a semi-religious character, originally intended to express thankfulness to the Great Spirit for bringing squaw-corn forward to the roasting-ear stage. They also perform the dog-dance, which in like manner, hallows the ripening of the puppy-crop, when the surplus is used for soup, while some are saved for later sacrifice and consumption in the dish known to frontier whites as ["pupgullion?], for which we have the recipe which is at the service of any epicurean friend. Mr. Cody's aborigines also performed the scalp-dance, and they also chase a rheumatic buffalo bull round a sawdust ring, lasso him and yank him up, all standing. In addition to this they shoot at things, and they do it all arrayed in feathers, with bear-claw necklaces, and gorgeously daubed with red keel and the slough mud of their native land.
It is a good show, a circus, an Indian whoop-la, and is as near a reproduction of the parliamentary practice of the Nebraska Legislature as Mr. Cody can put on the road. It has already caused several lads in New York to pawn their school-books and set out for the wild, wild West, in search of gore.
Its proprietor, finding cheap transportation imperiled by the fourth clause of the Interstate Commerce Act, and not being in possession of Senator Hearst's concise opinion of that law, fled to England with his Indians, his cowboys and his buffalo, and has opened in London. This was a good business move, for England is fond of looking at all aboriginal people. When Zenobia the unfortunate Queen of Palmyra, graced the triumph of Aurclian, the Roman populace looked upon her with no livelier curiosity then that with which the Londoners gaze upon the The-Man-Who-Pumps-Thunder, or The-Indian-Who-Loves-Fire-water, or any day other Sioux, Pottowattamie or Pawnee chief who strays into England.
It was good business tact in Mr. Cody to go there with his show, and his nickname of Buffalo Bill and his long hair, but he has struck a streak of luck so fat as to break Barnum's heart and turn Adam Forepaugh green with envy, in getting Gladstone to see his show and afterwards make a long speech about it, which is cabled to every paper in America.
A good many good people in England think that the Americans are all descended from Pocahontas, so that what Gladstone said is perfectly natural. After looking at the show, he took bite and sup with Bill, and in his speech said that "the performers had done themselves more than justice. The institutions and progress of America had been to him subjects of great interest. The performers surpassed Englishmen in feats of horsemanship. The main purpose of the exhibition was to bring American life before the English people, and there was no purpose he valued more. Nothing was more desirable than a true and accurate representation of the American world."
It was all just as amiable and as pleasant as it could be, and if Bill's Indians and cowboys and buffalo fall to do their best after it, they should be sent home to encounter the perils of the long and short haul controversy. It will result in arming all future immigration to this country, and the exiles who resort to our shores will hereafter look for birch canoes at Sandy Hook, and expect campfires on Bergen Hill and Hoboken Heights, as they come through the Narrows. If they are not welcomed to Castle Garden with a corn-dance and offered ponies for their marriageable daughters, they will feel that they have been decieved, and that American life has not been properly put before the English public.
