Page:Sawdust & Spangles.djvu/252

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
216
SAWDUST AND SPANGLES

fought his former associates and did a large business. During the performances he was in the habit of singing a song entitled My One-Horse Show, which took the popular fancy and materially helped him. In this song he told how the opposition had placed false buoys in the river, thereby misleading his pilots and throwing him on sand bars where his craft stuck for days.

For the information of those unacquainted with river travel I will say that buoys are placed by the government in dangerous parts of the river to point out the only safe channel. Now, whether or not the opposition was really guilty of this trick, Dan's verses gained him the sympathy of the people, and with that sympathy came their dollars. In fact, to such an extent did Dan work upon the sympathies of the people that, at many points, they actually refused to allow the opposition boats to land. At some of these places the opposition had themselves incurred the displeasure of the people by touching at the landing only long enough to receive their audiences, and then going into the middle of the river to give their performances, thus avoiding the payment of the license fee.

This lasted through the winter, and when