The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Young Acrobat of the Great North
American Circus, by Horatio Alger Jr.

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Title: The Young Acrobat of the Great North American Circus

Author: Horatio Alger Jr.

Release Date: September 5, 2007 [EBook #22521]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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THE YOUNG ACROBAT

of the

Great North American Circus

BY

HORATIO ALGER, Jr.

AUTHOR OF "THE ERIE TRAIN BOY," "RAGGED DICK,"
"TATTERED TOM," ETC.

NEW YORK
HURST AND COMPANY
PUBLISHERS

THE YOUNG ACROBAT

CHAPTER I.

KIT WATSON.

There was great excitement in Smyrna, especially among the boys.
Barlow's Great American Circus in its triumphal progress from State to
State was close at hand, and immense yellow posters announcing its
arrival were liberally displayed on fences and barns, while smaller
bills were put up in the post office, the hotel, and the principal
stores, and distributed from house to house.

It was the largest circus that had ever visited Smyrna. At least a dozen
elephants marched with ponderous steps in its preliminary procession,
while clowns, acrobats, giants, dwarfs, fat women, cannibals, and hairy
savages from Thibet and Madagascar, were among the strange wonders which
were to be seen at each performance for the small sum of fifty cents,
children half price.

For weeks the young people had been looking forward to the advent of
this marvelous aggregation of curiosities, and the country papers from
farther east had given glowing accounts of the great show, which was
emphatically pronounced greater and more gorgeous than in any previous
year. But it may be as well to reproduce, in part, the description given
in the posters:

BARLOW'S GREAT NORTH AMERICAN