and 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 circus-dresses after the chariots, and looking some
haughty and contemptuous, and others quiet and even bored, as if it were
nothing to be part of such a procession. The boys tried to make them out
by the pictures and names on the bills: which was Rivers, the bare-back
rider, and which was O'Dale, the champion tumbler; which was the
India-rubber man, which the ring-master, which the clown. Covered with
dust, gasping with the fatigue of a three hours' run beside the
procession, but fresh at heart as in the beginning, they arrived with it
on the Commons, where the tent-wagons were already drawn up, and the
ring was made, and mighty men were driving the iron-headed tent-stakes,
and stretching the ropes of the great skeleton of the pavilion which
they were just going to clothe with canvas. The boys were not allowed to
come anywhere near, except three or four who got leave to fetch water
from a neighboring well, and thought themselves richly paid with
half-price tickets. The other boys were proud to pass a word with them
as they went by with their brimming buckets; fellows who had money to go
in would have been glad to carry water just for the glory of coming
close to the circus-men. They stood about in twos and threes, and lay
upon the grass in groups debating whether a tan-bark ring was better
than a sawdust ring; there were different opinions. They came as near
the wagons as they dared, and looked at the circus-horses munching hay
from the tail-boards, just like common horses. The wagons were left
standing outside of the tent; but when it was up, the horses were taken
into the dressing-room, and then the boys, with many a backward look at
the wide spread of canvas, and the flags and streamers floating over it
from the centre-pole (the centre-pole was revered almost like a
distinguished personage), ran home to dinner so as to get back good and
early, and be among the first to go in. All round, before the circus
doo