s 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
bareback-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 saw-dust 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 doors were open, the doorkeepers of the
side-shows were inviting people to come in and see the giants and fat
woman and boa-constrictors, and there were stands for peanuts and candy
and lemonade; the vendors cried, "Ice-cold lemonade, from fifteen
hundred miles under ground! Walk up, roll up, tumble up, any way you get
up!" The boys thought this brilliant drolling, but they had no time to
listen after the doors were open, and they had no money to spend on
side-shows or dainties anyway. Inside the tent they found it dar