d about to plague him had a vague respect for his lamentable
appetite.

None of the boys ever did run off, except the son of one of the
preachers. He was a big boy, whom my boy remotely heard of, but never
saw, for he lived in another part of the town; but his adventure was
known to all the boys, and his heroism rated high among them. It took
nothing from this, in their eyes, that he was found, homesick and crying
in Cincinnati, and was glad to come back--the great fact was that he had
run off; nothing could change or annul that. If he had made any mistake,
it was in not running off with a circus, for that was the true way of
running off. Then, if you were ever seen away from home, you were seen
tumbling through a hoop and alighting on the crupper of a barebacked
piebald, and if you ever came home you came home in a gilded chariot,
and you flashed upon the domestic circle in flesh-colored tights and
spangled breech-cloth. As soon as the circus-bills began to be put up
you began to hear that certain boys were going to run off with that
circus, and the morning after it left town you heard they had gone, but
they always turned up at school just the same. It was believed that the
circus-men would take any boy who wanted to go with them, and would
fight off his friends if they tried to get him away.

The boys made a very careful study of the circus-bills, and afterwards,
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 b