How a long nose cost a showman eighty francs

TURIN, 1885 AD — On Sundays at Chieri, a schoolboy and a travelling showman wanted the same boys. The schoolboy grew up to be Father John Bosco. He runs a house for homeless boys in Turin, and all Italy calls him Don Bosco.

Don Bosco’s school friends had formed a club around him, the Società dell’Allegria (the Society of Cheerfulness). On feast days he took them to the catechism the Jesuits taught at the church of Sant’Antonio.

But the boys of Chieri admired the showman. He had run from one end of the town to the other in two and a half minutes. He kept his newest tricks for Sundays. So many boys went to watch that Don Bosco had few left to take to church.

Don Bosco sent people to ask the showman to stop, at least during the services at Sant’Antonio. The showman laughed, and boasted he could beat any student in the school. The students took that as an insult, and they all waited for Don Bosco to answer.

Don Bosco had grown up a farm boy. Ever since he was small, he had copied the acrobats at fairs. Before he had thought it through, he told his friends he would take the showman on. One of them told the showman, and Don Bosco wrote: “there I was, committed to a challenge.” His reason was short: “To please my friends.”

The stake for the race was twenty francs. Don Bosco had no money of his own, so several friends from the club put it up for him.

Don Bosco took off his jacket and made the sign of the cross. He asked Our Lady to take care of him, as he always did, in things large or small. The showman went ahead by a few steps. Then Don Bosco caught up and left him so far behind that the man stopped halfway and gave up.

Next the showman bet forty francs on a jump, at a small bridge over a wide ditch full of water. The showman jumped first. His foot landed almost touching the low wall of the bridge. He had to grab a tree on the bank so he wouldn’t fall into the ditch. Don Bosco made the same jump. But he pushed down on the low wall with his hands, and that carried him past the wall and the ditch.

A hat on top of a stick

Then Don Bosco chose a balancing game called the magic wand, for eighty francs. He stood a stick upright on his palm, with a hat on its tip. He never touched it with his other hand, but he made it hop along his fingers, up his arm and face to his forehead, and back. The showman got the wand as far as his lips. Then, Don Bosco wrote, “because his nose was rather long, it bumped, lost its balance, and he had to catch it with his hand to keep it from falling to the ground.”

The showman put his last hundred francs on a climb. Whoever got his feet closer to the top of an elm tree would win. “In a way we would even have been glad for him to win,” Don Bosco wrote, “because we felt sorry for him and did not want to ruin him.”

The showman went up first, so high that the crowd said no one could climb further. Don Bosco climbed as high as he could without bending the tree. Then he gripped the trunk with his hands and pulled himself up. His feet ended about a metre above the showman’s highest point.

The winners hand the money back

The showman had lost every franc he bet. The students offered to give the showman his money back if he paid for their dinner at the Muretto inn. Twenty-two of them went, on a Thursday. The showman paid for the meal and had a good dinner with them, and he got almost all his money back.

When they parted, the showman thanked them all: “By giving me back this money, you keep me from ruin. […] I will keep a grateful memory of it, but I will never again make a bet with students.”