it. Why,
then, do we foolishly speak of innocent boyhood?

Girls, on the other hand, may be innocent,--that is to say, when they
are extremely young. Of course they outgrow it when they arrive at years
of flirtation; but up to--say--their tenth or eleventh year, they rarely
go in for muddy boots and inappropriate peanuts,--at least not to the
same extent as boys. The average little girl is, moreover, seldom found
at the CIRCUS. She prefers WALLACK'S, or BOOTH'S theatre,--whereas your
usual boy despises the legitimate drama, and prefers to have his
dissipations served up with a great deal of horse and plentifully spiced
with the presence of the cheerful clown. For my part, I frankly confess
that I do not like boys, and heartily approve of the noble sentiment
expressed the other day by my landlady, who, on reading that the
Parisians had destroyed the Bois de Boulogne, remarked that, "Even if
the French couldn't spell 'boys' properly, she was glad to see that they
knew how to treat them." Pardon the errors of her pronunciation. She
learned French at a young ladies' seminary.

But I digress. It is a reprehensible habit. It is much better, as a
rule, to die game than it is to digress, though on the present occasion
there is no reason why I should do either. By the way, if a man has to
choose between having either his leg or his arm amputated, which ought
he to choose? Obviously he should choose ether,--that being much safer
than chloroform.

As I was saying, the CIRCUS always has a strong flavor of orange peel.
Will some one explain why orange-peel has such a close affinity for
horses and sawdust? I have attempted to account for it by an elaborate
stretching of the theory of chemical affinities. People crack peanuts at
the CIRCUS, because the cracking of peanuts in its prosaic dreariness is
in harmony with the cracking of jokes by the dreary clown. The clown
himself is always hoarse, obviously because of his intimate association
with the feats of horsemanship. Here are two cases in which the theory
of affinities clearly applies. Now, can we not go further, and find some
connection between the ring of the Circus and the peel of the orange? Or
again, may not the presence of unwholesome animals in the arena have
something to do with the presence of orange-rind in the seats? The
latter is clearly a rind-pest of the very worst variety.

At this rate we shall never get inside the _Circus_ building. So say
MARGARET; and I ther