The hitching-posts are full of whinnering country horses, and people are in town you wouldn't think existed if you hadn't seen their pictures in Puck and Yudge, people from over by Muchinippi, and out Noodletoozy way, big, red-necked men with the long loping step that comes from walking on the plowed ground. Following them are lanky women with their front teeth gone, and their figures bowed by drudgery, dragging wide-eyed children whose uncouth finery betrays the "country jake," even if the freckles and the sun-bleached hair could keep the secret. From the far-off fastnesses, where there are still log-cabins chinked with mud, they have ventured to see the show come into town, and when they have seen that, they will retire again beyond our ken. How every sense is numbed and stunned by the magnificence and splendor of the painted and gilded wagons as they rumble past, the driver rolling and pitching in his seat, as he handles the ribbons of eight horses all at once! The farmer's heart is filled with admiration of his craft, as much as the children's hearts are at the gaudy pictures.
The allegorical tableau-car solemnly waggles past, Europe, and Asia, and Africa, and Australia brilliant in grease-paint and gorgeous cheesecloth robes. And can you guess who the fat lady is up on the very tip-top of all, on the tip-top where the wobble is the worst?
Our own Columbia! It must be fine to ride around that way all dressed up in a flag. But a sourer lot of faces you never saw in your life. No. I am wrong. For downright melancholy and despondency you must wait till the funny old clown comes along in his little bit of a buggy drawn by a little bit of a donkey.
"And, oh, looky! Here comes the elephants, just the same as in the joggerfy books. And see the men walking beside them. They come from the place the elephants do. See, they have on the clothes they wear in that country. Don't they look proud? Who wouldn't be proud to get to walk with an elephant? And if you ever do anything to an elephant to make him mad, he'll always remember it, and some day he'll get even with you. One time there was a man, and he gave an elephant a chew of tobacco, and - O-o-ooh! See that man in the cage with the lions! Don't it just make the cold chills run over you? I wouldn't be there for a million dollars, would you, ma?
"What they laughing at down the street? Ma, make Lizzie get down;she's right in my way. I don't want to see it pretty soon. I want to see it naow! Oh, ain't it funny? See the old clowns playing on horns! Ain't it too killing? Aw, look at them ponies. I woosht Ihad one. Johnny Pym has got a goat he can hitch up. What was that, pa? What was that went 'OoOOoohm!'""Whoa, Nell, whoa there! Steady, gal, steaday! Ho, there! Ho!
Whoa -whoa-hup! Whad dy y' about? Fool horse. Whoa . . . whoa so, gal, soo-o. Lion, I guess, or a tagger, or sumpum or other."And talk about music. You thought the band was grand. You just wait.
Don't you hear it down the street? It'll be along in a minute now.
There it is. That's the cally-ope. That's what the show bills call:
"The Steam Car of the Muses." . . . Mm-well, I don't know but it is just a leetle off the pitch, especially towards the end of a note, but you must remember that you can't haul a very big boiler on a wagon, and the whistles let out an awful lot of steam. It's pretty hard to keep the pressure even. But it's loud. That's the main thing. And the man that plays on it - no, not that fellow in the overalls with a wad of greasy waste in his hand. He 's only the engineer. I mean the artist, the man that plays on the keys. Well, he knows what the people want. He has his fingers on the public pulse. Does he give them a Bach fugue, or Guillmant's "Grand Choeur?"'Deed, he doesn't. He goes right to the heart, with "Patrick's Day in the Morning," and "The Carnival of Venice," and "Home, Sweet Home,"and "Oh, Where, Oh Where has my Little Dog Gone?" He knows his business. A shade off the key, perhaps, but my! Ain't it grand? So loud and nice!
"Well, that's all of it . . . . Why, child, I can't make it any longer than it is.
What do you want me to drive round into the other street for? You've seen all there is to see. Got all your trading done, mother? Well, then I expect we'd better put for home. Now, Eddy, I told you 'No'
once, and that's the end of it. Hush up now! Look here, sir! Do you want me to take and 'tend to you right before everybody? Well, I will now, if I hear another whimper out o' ye. Ck-ck-ck! Git ep there, Nelly."Some day, when we get big, and have whole, whole lots of money we're going to the circus every time it comes to town, to the real circus, the one you have to pay to get into. For if merely the street parade is so magnificent, what must the show itself be?
How people can sit at the table on circus day and stuff, and stuff the way they do is more than I can understand. You'd think they hadn't any more chances to eat than they had to go to the show.
And they can find more things to do before they get started! And then, after the house is all locked up and everything, they've got to go back after a handkerchief! What does anybody want with a handkerchief at a circus?
It's exasperating enough to have to choose between going in the afternoon and not going at all. Why, sure, it's finer at night.
Lots finer. You know that kind of a light the peanut-roaster man has got down by the post-office. Burns that kind of stuff they use to take out grease-spots. Ye-ah. Gasoline. Well, at the circus at night, they don't have just one light like that, but bunches and bunches of them on the tentpoles. No, silly! Of course not. Of course they don't set the tent afire. But say! What if they did, eh? The place would be all full of people, laughing at the country jake that comes out to ride the trick-mule, and you'd happen to look up and see where the canvas was ju-u-ust beginning to blaze, and you'd jump up and holler: "Fire! Fire!" as loud as ever you could because you saw it first, and you'd point to the place.
