sylph-like lady came out into the
arena of Forepaugh's great circus-tent last evening, and poised herself
upon one tiny toe on the back of an untamed and foaming Arabian barb
that dashed round and round the sawdust ring. Talk about your Sapphos
and your poetry! Would Chicago hesitate a moment in choosing between
Sappho and Mdlle. Hortense de Vere, queen of the air? And what
rhythm--be it Sapphic, or choriambic, or Ionic a minore--is to be
compared with the symphonic poetry of a shapely female balanced upon
one delicate toe on the bristling back of a fiery, untamed palfrey that
whoops round and round to the music of the band, the plaudits of the
public, and the still, small voice of the dyspeptic gent announcing a
minstrel show "under this canvas after the performance, which is not
yet half completed?"

If it makes us proud to go into our bookstores, and see thousands upon
thousands of tomes waiting for customers; if our bosoms swell with
delight to see the quiet and palatial homes of our cultured society
overflowing with the most expensive wall-papers and the costliest
articles of virtue; if we take an ineffable enjoyment in the thousand
indications of a growing refinement in the midst of us,--vaster still
must be the pride, the rapture, we feel when we behold our intellect
and our culture paying the tribute of adoration to the circus. Viewing
these enlivening scenes, why may we not cry in the words of Sappho,
"Wealth without thee, Worth, is a shameless creature; but the mixture
of both is the height of happiness"?

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