if you can help it, boy, and don't ever get
the idea that the Lord is sitting up nights holding pool tickets on a
prize fight."

"Uncle Ike, why didn't you go to the circus the other night? We had more
fun, and lemonade, and peanuts, and the clown was so funny," said the
boy; "and they had a fight, and a circus man threw a man out of the
tent; and a woman rode on a horse with those great, wide skirts, and
rosin on her feet and everywhere, so she would stick on, and----"

"Oh, don't tell me," said Uncle Ike, as he ran a broom straw into his
pipe stem to open up the pores; "I was brought up among circuses, and
used to sit up all night and go out on the road to meet the old wagon
show coming to town. Did you ever go away out five or six miles, in the
night, to meet a circus, and get tired, and lay down by the road and go
to sleep, and have the dew on the grass wet your bare feet and trousers
clear up to your waistband, and suddenly have the other boys wake you
up, and there was a fog so you couldn't see far, and suddenly about
daylight you hear a noise like a hog that gets frightened and says
'Woof!' and there coming out of the fog right on to you is the elephant,
looking larger than a house, and you keep still for fear of scaring him,
and he passes on and then the camels come, and the cages, and the sleepy
drivers letting the six horses go as they please, and the wagons with
the tents, and the performers sleeping on the bundles, and the band
wagon with all the musicians asleep, and the lions and tigers don't say
anything; and you never do anything except keep your eyes bulging out
till they get by, and then you realize you are six miles from home, and
you follow the procession into town, and when you get home your parents
take you across a chair and pet you with a press board for being out all
night, until you are so blistered that you cannot sit down on a seat at
the circus in the afternoon. Oh, I have been there, boy, barefooted and
bareheaded, with a hickory shirt on open clear down, and torn trousers
opened clear up. Lemonade never tastes like it does at a circus, sawdust
never smells the same anywhere else, and nothing in the whole world
smells like a circus," and the old man's face lighted up as though the
recollection had made him young again.

"Did you ever see a fight at a circus, Uncle Ike?" asked the red-headed
boy, who seemed to have been more impressed with the fight he had seen
than with the performance.