Then people was
people. Then life was something. Then the tattooing business was a
business. When the old London Musee was next door and everybody knew how
to have a good time."
The automatic piano in the penny arcade whangs dolorously into a forgotten
tango. The two errand boys stand with their eyes glued on the interiors of
the picture slot machines--"An Artist's Model" and "On the Beach at
Atlantic City." A gun pops foolishly in the rear and the 3-inch bullseye
clangs. In a corner behind the Postal Card Photo Taken in a Minute gallery
sits Dutch, the world's leading tattooer. Sample tattoo designs cover the
two walls. Dragons, scorpions, bulbous nymphs, crossed flags, wreathed
anchors, cupids, butterflies, daggers and quaint decorations that seem the
grotesque survivals of the mid-Victorian schools of fantasy. Photographs
of famous men also cover the walls--Capt. Constantinus tattooed from head
to foot, every inch of him; Barnum's favorites, ancient and forgotten
kooch dancers, fire eaters, sword swallowers, magicians and museum freaks.
And a two column article from the Chicago Chronicle of 1897, yellowed and
framed and recounting in sonorous phrases ("pulchritudinous epidermis" is
featured frequently) that the society folk of Chicago have taken up
tattooing as a fad, following the lead of New York's Four Hundred, who
followed the lead of London's most aristocratic circles; and that Prof.
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