least efficient of the
corps. They work all the year round, sucking their cents from the North
in summer, and from the South in winter. They carry everything with
them, except it may be fuel and provisions. Each has his special duty
appointed. After acting at night they retire to their tents to sleep,
and the proper people take the circus-tent down, and start at once for
the next place they are to appear at; the performers and their tent-men
rise early in the morning, and start so as to reach the ground about
eleven; they then rest and prepare, so as to be ready, after the people
of the village have dined, to give their first performance; then they
rest and refresh ready for their evening repetition. Some companies used
to make their own gas, but experience has proved that wax-lights are
sweeter and cheaper in the long run, so gas making is nearly exploded.
After this second performance they retire to rest; the circus tent-men
strike and pack the tent, then start off for the next place of
exhibition, the actors and their tents following as before mentioned:
thus they go on throughout the year, bipeds and quadrupeds scarcely ever
entering a house.

There are numbers of these circus companies in the States, of which the
largest is the one to which Van Amburgh is attached, and which, the fat
boy told me, is about three times the size of his own--Van Amburgh
taking always upwards of a dozen cages of his wild beasts. The work, he
says, is very hard, but the money comes in pretty freely, which I can
readily believe, as the bump of Inquisitiveness grows here with a
luxuriance unknown elsewhere, and is only exceeded by its sister bump of
Acquisitiveness, which two organs constitute audience and actors.

I give you no account of scenery on the road for two reasons: first,
because there are no striking features to relieve the alternations of
rude cultivation and ruder forest; and secondly, because in winter,
Nature being despoiled of the life-giving lines of herbage and foliage,
a sketch of dreariness would be all that truth could permit. I will
therefore beg you to consider the twenty-one hours past, and Louisville
reached in safety, where hot tea and "trimmings"--as the astute young
Samivel hath it--soon restored us from the fatigues of a snail-paced
journey, over the most abominable road a man can imagine, although it is
the mail route between the flourishing towns of Louisville and
Nashville. Should any ambitious spirit feel