entranced. I
lost my companion Tom Dribble, in a tumult and scuffle that took place
near one of the shows, but I was too much occupied in mind to think
long about him. I strolled about until dark, when the fair was lighted
up, and a new scene of magic opened upon me. The illumination of the
tents and booths; the brilliant effect of the stages decorated with
lamps, with dramatic groups flaunting about them in gaudy dresses,
contrasted splendidly with the surrounding darkness; while the uproar
of drums, trumpets, fiddles, hautboys, and cymbals, mingled with the
harangues of the showmen, the squeaking of Punch, and the shouts and
laughter of the crowd, all united to complete my giddy distraction.

Time flew without my perceiving it. When I came to myself and thought
of the school, I hastened to return. I inquired for the wagon in which
I had come: it had been gone for hours. I asked the time: it was almost
midnight! A sudden quaking seized me. How was I to get back to school?
I was too weary to make the journey on foot, and I knew not where to
apply for a conveyance. Even if I should find one, could I venture to
disturb the school-house long after midnight? to arouse that sleeping
lion, the usher, in the very midst of his night's rest? The idea was
too dreadful for a delinquent school-boy. All the horrors of return
rushed upon me--my absence must long before this have been
remarked--and absent for a whole night? A deed of darkness not easily
to be expiated. The rod of the pedagogue budded forth into tenfold
terrors before my affrighted fancy. I pictured to myself punishment and
humiliation in every variety of form; and my heart sickened at the
picture. Alas! how often are the petty ills of boyhood as painful to
our tender natures, as are the sterner evils of manhood to our robuster
minds.

I wandered about among the booths, and I might have derived a lesson
from my actual feelings, how much the charms of this world depend upon
ourselves; for I no longer saw anything gay or delightful in the
revelry around me. At length I lay down, wearied and perplexed, behind
one of the large tents, and covering myself with the margin of the tent
cloth to keep off the night chill, I soon fell fast asleep.

I had not slept long, when I was awakened by the noise of merriment
within an adjoining booth. It was the itinerant theatre, rudely
constructed of boards and canvas. I peeped through an aperture, and saw
the whole dramatis personae,