s; the company of soldiers broke into
platoons, retreated from the stage, and were succeeded by a troop of
horse, who came prancing onward with such a sound of trumpets and
trampling of hoofs as might have startled Don Quixote himself; while
an old toper of inveterate ill-habits uplifted his black bottle and
took off a hearty swig. Meantime, the Merry Andrew began to caper and
turn somersets, shaking his sides, nodding his head and winking his
eyes in as lifelike a manner as if he were ridiculing the nonsense of
all human affairs and making fun of the whole multitude beneath him.
At length the old magician (for I compared the showman to Prospero
entertaining his guests with a masque of shadows) paused that I might
give utterance to my wonder.

"What an admirable piece of work is this!" exclaimed I, lifting up my
hands in astonishment.

Indeed, I liked the spectacle and was tickled with the old man's
gravity as he presided at it, for I had none of that foolish wisdom
which reproves every occupation that is not useful in this world of
vanities. If there be a faculty which I possess more perfectly than
most men, it is that of throwing myself mentally into situations
foreign to my own and detecting with a cheerful eye the desirable
circumstances of each. I could have envied the life of this
gray-headed showman, spent as it had been in a course of safe and
pleasurable adventure in driving his huge vehicle sometimes through
the sands of Cape Cod and sometimes over the rough forest-roads of the
north and east, and halting now on the green before a village
meeting-house and now in a paved square of the metropolis. How often
must his heart have been gladdened by the delight of children as they
viewed these animated figures, or his pride indulged by haranguing
learnedly to grown men on the mechanical powers which produced such
wonderful effects, or his gallantry brought into play--for this is an
attribute which such grave men do not lack--by the visits of pretty
maidens! And then with how fresh a feeling must he return at intervals
to his own peculiar home! "I would I were assured of as happy a life
as his," thought I.

Though the showman's wagon might have accommodated fifteen or twenty
spectators, it now contained only himself and me and a third person,
at whom I threw a glance on entering. He was a neat and trim young man
of two or three and twenty; his drab hat and green frock-coat with
velvet collar were smart, though no