a favorite with the boys, though they believed that
the _Tremont_ could squirt farther, and they had a belief in its quiet
efficiency which was fostered by its reticence in public. It was small
and black, but the _Neptune_ was large, and painted of a gay color lit
up with gilding that sent the blood leaping through a boy's veins. The
boys knew the _Neptune_ was out of order, but they were always expecting
it would come right, and in the mean time they felt that it was an honor
to the town, and they followed it as proudly back to the engine-house
after one of its magnificent failures as if it had been a magnificent
success. The boys were always making magnificent failures themselves,
and they could feel for the _Neptune_.

IV

GLIMPSES OF THE LARGER WORLD

THE TRAVELLING CIRCUS

The boys made a very careful study of the circus bills, and when the
circus came they held the performance to a strict account for any
difference between the feats and their representation. For a fortnight
beforehand they worked themselves up for the arrival of the circus into
a fever of fear and hope, for it was always a question with a great many
whether they could get their fathers to give them the money to go in.
The full price was two bits, and the half-price was a bit, or a Spanish
real, then a commoner coin than the American dime in the West; and every
boy, for that time only, wished to be little enough to look young enough
to go in for a bit. Editors of newspapers had a free ticket for every
member of their families; and my boy was sure of going to the circus
from the first rumor of its coming. But he was none the less deeply
thrilled by the coming event, and he was up early on the morning of the
great day, to go out and meet the circus procession beyond the
corporation line.

I do not really know how boys live through the wonder and the glory of
such a sight. Once there were two chariots--one held the band in
red-and-blue uniforms, and was drawn by eighteen piebald horses; and the
other was drawn by a troop of Shetland ponies, and carried in a vast
mythical sea-shell little boys in spangled tights and little girls in
the gauze skirts and wings of fairies. There was not a flaw in this
splendor to the young eyes that gloated on it, and that followed it in
rapture through every turn and winding of its course in the Boy's Town;
nor in the magnificence of the actors and actresses, who came riding two
by two in their circu