had, 'The lion and the lamb shall lie down together.' And the man that
put up the show bills give out to everybody that this was a show that
church members could go to and take their children to, because there'd
be two kinds o' tickets, one for the animal show and one for the circus,
and folks that didn't favor the circus needn't go near it; but
everybody, he said, ought to see the animals, for they had pretty near
every beast of the field and bird of the air that the Lord had created.

"Well, us Goshen folks, we talked it over at home and in our Mite
Society. We'd always been mighty strict about worldly amusements, all of
us except Uncle Jimmy Judson. He used to say: 'As long as children ain't
breakin' any of the ten commandments or any of their bones, let 'em
alone, let 'em alone.' But the most of the children in our neighborhood
never had seen the inside of a show tent, and of course every one of 'em
was anxious to go to that show. We went to Parson Page about it, and he
studied a while and says he: 'If the Lord made those animals, it surely
cannot be sinful to go and see them; and I see no reason why every one
in Goshen church should not attend the animal show.' Well, that was
enough for us, and everybody in the church and out o' the church turned
out to that show.

"I reckon you know, child, how it is when a circus comes to town.
Country folks has their own ways o' passin' the time and makin' pleasure
for themselves, and town folks theirs, but a circus is one thing that
brings all the country folks and all the town folks together. The
country folks come to see the town and the circus, and the town folks,
they turn out to see the circus and the country folks, and I reckon they
got as much fun out of us as they did out o' the show, lookin' at our
old-fashioned dresses and bonnets and laughin' at our old-fashioned
ways.

"Well, the time I'm tellin' about, the country folks turned out as they
never had before, and there was people in town from all over the county.
Some of 'em, they said, had traveled half the night to git in town
bright and early. I ricollect the weather was more like June than May.
It hadn't rained for a long time, and when the folks begun rollin' into
town, the dust rose till you couldn't see the road before you, and there
was so many carriages and buggies and two-horse wagons hitched around
the streets it looked like there wouldn't be room for the procession to
pass. Sam Amos was standin' on the