ugh space,
James Robinson turning handsprings on his dapple-gray steed, and, last
and most ravishing of all, little Willie Sells in pink tights on his
three charging Shetland ponies, whose breakneck course in the picture
followed one whichever way he turned. When these glories had been
pasted upon the wall and had been discussed to the point of cynicism,
the Court of Boyville reluctantly adjourned to get in the night wood
and dream of a wilderness of monkeys.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

During the two weeks after the appearance of the glad tidings on the
bill-boards, the boys of Willow Creek spent many hours in strange
habiliments, making grotesque imitations of the spectacles upon the
boards. Piggy Pennington rolled his trousers far above his knees for
tights, and galloped his father's fat delivery horse up and down the
alley, riding sideways, standing, and backwards, with much vainglory.
To simulate the motley of the tight-rope-walking clown, Jimmy Sears
wore the calico lining of his clothes outside, when he was in the
royal castle beyond his mother's ken. Mealy donned carpet slippers in
Pennington's barn, and wore long pink-and-white striped stockings of
a suspiciously feminine appearance, fastened to his abbreviated shirt
waist with stocking-suspenders, hated of all boys. Abe Carpenter, in a
bathing-trunk, did shudder-breeding trapeze tricks, and Bud Perkins,
who nightly rubbed himself limber in oil made by hanging a bottle of
angle-worms in the sun to fry, wore his red calico base-ball clothes,
and went through keg-hoops in a dozen different ways. In the streets
of the town the youngsters appeared disguised as ordinary boys. They
revelled in the pictured visions of the circus, but were sceptical
about the literal fulfilment of some of the promises made on the
bills. Certain things advertised were eliminated from reasonable
expectation: for instance, the boys all knew that the giraffe would
not be discovered eating off the top of a cocoanut-tree; nor would the
monkeys play a brass band; and they knew that they would not see the
"Human Fly" walk on the ceiling at the "concert." For no boy has ever
saved enough money to buy a ticket to the "concert." Nevertheless,
they gloated over the pictures of the herd of giraffes and the
monkey-band and the graceful "Human Fly" walking upside down "defying
the laws of gravitation;" and they considered no future, however
pleasant, after the day and date on the bills. Thus