paid him homage in his description of a circus in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and it is likely a boyhood Twain actually saw Rice perform when his circus came to Hannibal for a show. His shows became more famous than any of the other shows touring at the time, including that of rival, Phineas Taylor Barnum. He pioneered a vaudevillian style before there was vaudeville. He was very patriotic, later influencing the likes of George M. Cohan. He was also one of the main models for "Uncle Sam". He died almost penniless in 1900 and is buried in the Old First Methodist Church cemetery in West Long Branch, New Jersey. The small town of Girard, Pennsylvania, where Rice had a home and lived there for many years, has a three-day festival dedicated to Dan Rice called "Dan Rice Days". Expressions A number of popular expressions came into being around Dan Rice. Rice campaigned for Zachary Taylor as president, inviting him to campaign on the circus bandwagon, whence the expression "to jump on the bandwagon". Early in his career, Rice was down on his luck and only had one horse (in early circuses the core show was a horse show). His competitors mocked him, saying it was a "one horse show" as a derogatory. Rice was able to turn the expression around by putting on a good show, and it became famously attached to him for the rest of his life. The rallying cry of "Hey, Rube!" – later transformed into a noun – originated in New Orleans in 1848 when a member of Rice's troupe was attacked by a mob and he yelled to his friend Reuben, "Hey, Rube!". The phrase is most commonly known today in the circus world as a "Hey, Rube" meaning "come help in this fight". Decades before other circuses used the phrase, an Arkansas paper praised Rice's as "The Greatest Show on Earth." See also G. L. Fox Footnotes Further reading The Life of Dan Rice, by Maria Ward Brown, 1901. via Internet Archive (scanned book, illustrated) Domowicz, Geoffrey L; Girard: A Canal Town History; Arcadia Publishing Blackface minstrel performers American clowns American circus performers Candidates in the 1868 United States presidential election Entertainers from New York City 1823 births 1900 deaths 19th-century American singers Burials in New Jersey