heaving with a jostling, goodnatured, happy, and
constantly increasing crowd that overflowed on Main Street in both
directions; and the good nature of this crowd was augmented in the ratio
that its size increased. The streets were a confusion of many colors,
and eager faces filled every window opening on Main Street or the
Square. Since nine o'clock all those of the courthouse had been
occupied, and here most of the damsels congregated to enjoy the
spectacle of the parade, and their swains attended, gallantly posting
themselves at coignes of less vantage behind the ladies. Some of the
faces that peeped from the dark, old court-house windows were
pretty, and some of them were not pretty; but nearly all of them were
rosy-cheeked, and all were pleasant to see because of the good
cheer they showed. Some of the gallants affected the airy and easy,
entertaining the company with badinage and repartee; some were openly
bashful. Now and then one of the latter, after long deliberation,
constructed a laborious compliment for his inamorata, and, after
advancing and propounding half of it, again retired into himself, smit
with a blissful palsy. Nearly all of them conversed in tones that might
have indicated that they were separated from each other by an acre lot
or two.

Here and there, along the sidewalk below, a father worked his way
through the throng, a licorice-bedaubed cherub on one arm, his coat
(borne with long enough) on the other; followed by a mother with the
other children hanging to her skirts and tagging exasperatingly
behind, holding red and blue toy balloons and delectable batons of
spiral-striped peppermint in tightly closed, sadly sticky fingers.

A thousand cries rent the air; the strolling mountebanks and gypsying
booth-merchants; the peanut vendors; the boys with palm-leaf fans for
sale; the candy sellers; the popcorn peddlers; the Italian with the toy
balloons that float like a cluster of colored bubbles above the heads of
the crowd, and the balloons that wail like a baby; the red-lemonade
man, shouting in the shrill voice that reaches everywhere and
endures forever: "Lemo! Lemo! Ice-cole lemo! Five cents, a nickel, a
half-a-dime, the twentiethpotofadollah! Lemo! Ice-cole lemo!"--all the
vociferating harbingers of the circus crying their wares. Timid youth,
in shoes covered with dust through which the morning polish but dimly
shone, and unalterably hooked by the arm to blushing maidens, bought
recklessly of p