oined," assured
Alfred, passing the letter to the treasurer.

Glancing at it: "Yes, I wrote that letter but you'll have to see Mr.
Thayer." As Alfred opened the door to depart he said, "You had best see
Mr. Noyes."

"How much are you going to pay me, Mr. Thayer?"

"Well, let me see, ten dollars a week will be about right, won't it
Charley?"

"Eh, no, pay him fifteen. He's worth it. He's the best boy I ever had
around me," was Mr. Noyes' answer.

Charley Noyes paid Alfred the first salary he ever earned with a circus
and it was so ordained that Alfred should pay the then famous circus
manager the last salary he ever received, years after the day Charley
Noyes declared Alfred the best boy he ever had around him. The once
famous manager, broken in health and fortune, was seeking employment and
it fell to Alfred's lot to secure him an engagement with a company of
which Alfred was the manager. When the salary of the veteran was being
discussed, Alfred's intervention secured him remuneration far in excess
of that hoped for. Soon after this engagement ended, Mr. Noyes died very
suddenly. The end came in a little city of Texas. It happened that the
minstrel company, owned by the one time new boy of the circus, was in
Waco. Letters on Mr. Noyes' person written by Alfred led the hotel
people to telegraph the minstrel manager, who hastened to the city where
his friend had died. Ere he arrived, the Masonic fraternity had
performed the last sad rites. Mr. Noyes was the friend of Alfred when he
needed friends and it was his intention to send all that was mortal of
him to his old home. Telegrams were not answered and Charles Noyes
sleeps in the little cemetery at Lampasas, Texas.

As the Thayer & Noyes Circus was one of the best, Alfred has always
considered his engagement with that concern as the beginning of his
professional career. Dr. James L. Thayer and his family were highly
connected. Mr. Noyes married the sister of his partner's wife. The
families did not agree and this led to a separation of the partners,
disastrous to both. Chas. Noyes' Crescent City Circus, and Dr. James
Thayer's Great American Circus never appealed to the people as did the
old title, nor was either of the concerns as meritorious as the Thayer &
Noyes concern. In the prosperous days of the show the proprietors and
their wives were welcome guests in the homes of the best families in the
cities visited. The writer remembers that in the city of Baltimor