WIRTH'S WOES.

NZ Truth, Issue 78, 15 December 1906, Page 5

WIRTH'S WOES.

"One Man's Meat is Another ; Man's Poison." " The Lerd Tempers the Wind to the j Sheru Lamb." "It is an ill wind that blows nobody any good and such aphorisms ' as that and those m the headlines hereof must have flown around mighty thick, at Gore on the second night of the show just concluded. It appears that a poor little travelling dramatic company, a regular aggregation of ham-fattters, barnstormers, what you will, hired the Gore Town Hall for the two show nights. The first night there was exactly 32s m the house and the second they found themselves opposed by Wirth's big circus combination. • Wouldn't that JAR you? In despair , slap up against it ; on the point of being snowed under, the "big four" waited upon Phil Worth and asked him to give or lend them £2 to get out of the town with, on condition that they would give him the date for the .Town- Hall; i.e., that they would not run m opposition to the. elephant and tie goat, the -hand-painted^ ; -«sebrar and; the Hilarious hyena. Wirth considered he was master o f the situation, anyway, so he went oft pop at their assurance and mentioned hoboes, bummers, cadgers, who might to be boobed, and so on, m audible tones. The poor, frozen-out cellarflappists were pouri and hopeless and not a bit of use opening up, when at 7 p.m. some 1500 people had gathered in' front of the circus waiting for de ban' to play. Wouldn't that rattle your slats ? But "The Devil takes care of his own" and things like that, and by 7.10 there had sprung up a fresh breeze. At 7.20 it was a Wellington zephyr and at 7.30 a howling southerly buster was whirling the tent away m ribbons, smashing the poles and injuring several of the employees "Ha, ha ! Revenge ! Now's our blink-blank-blunkett^ chance," yelled the main guy of the "opposition" show and by 7.35 the company, armed with kerosene tins and sticks and a gong borrowed from their boardinghouse, were raising weird music as they circulated among the" disappointed crowd, who still gaped at the place the circus had left so hastily, yelling. "Roll up, roll up, to the:, Town Hall ! No danger of getting killed 'by falling poles and canvas there ! Roll up and see the greatest musical and dramatic company m the world. Roll up, roll up! !" And they rolled up 1 By 7.50 the hall was packed to the doors and people were paying double price for seats on the stage, while scores pungled up for the privilege of poking their nuts through the open windows. The Goryuns had come out for a bit of fun and .they were not going back to the fields or the dredges or the cows without it. When all was over the Greatest Dramatic Co., so recently struggling with a stream that it seemed certain must forever hide them, sat around and grinned capaciously while the manager counted up sonve £75 a£ the -^kinKs. : What Phil Wirth thought or said is not recorded, but^h6' must- haver felt tliaVtfcvftg&-were not coming "his" ■w'ifl .that the- battle At^^tja££s%^oJiiHiZ fcfc£; %w>i^*^t* / bloweth wrM* it listeth and such like homely proverbs. What George Stephensbn— the erat well-to-do musical comedy entrepreneur, now knocked out after a strenuous fight with J. Casius Williamson— who was an onlooker, said was : "Oh, Hell ! I never had a stroke of luck like this m all the time I ran my shows." All of which goes to show that you can't always generally sometimes frequently tell; ain't it?