cus was always a failure, like most other things boys
undertake. They usually broke up under the strain of rivalry; everybody
wanted to be the clown or ring-master; or else the boy they got the barn
of behaved badly, and went into the house crying, and all the fellows
had to run.

[Illustration]

PASSING SHOWS

There were only two kinds of show known by that name in the Boy's Town:
a nigger show, or a performance of burnt-cork minstrels; and an animal
show, or a strolling menagerie; and the boys always meant a menagerie
when they spoke of a show, unless they said just what sort of show. The
only perfect joy on earth in the way of an entertainment, of course, was
a circus, but after the circus the show came unquestionably next. It
made a processional entry into the town almost as impressive as the
circus's, and the boys went out to meet it beyond the corporation line
in the same way. It always had two elephants, at least, and four or five
camels, and sometimes there was a giraffe. These headed the procession,
the elephants in the very front, with their keepers at their heads, and
then the camels led by halters dangling from their sneering lips and
contemptuous noses. After these began to come the show-wagons, with
pictures on their sides, very flattered portraits of the wild beasts and
birds inside; lions first, then tigers (never meaner than Royal Bengal
ones, which the boys understood to be a superior breed), then leopards,
then pumas and panthers; then bears, then jackals and hyenas; then bears
and wolves; then kangaroos, musk-oxen, deer, and such harmless cattle;
and then ostriches, emus, lyre-birds, birds-of-Paradise, and all the
rest.

From time to time the boys ran back from the elephants and camels to get
what good they could out of the scenes in which these hidden wonders
were dramatized in acts of rapine or the chase, but they always came
forward to the elephants and camels again. Even with them they had to
endure a degree of denial, for although you could see most of the
camels' figures, the elephants were so heavily draped that it was a kind
of disappointment to look at them. The boys kept as close as they could,
and came as near getting under the elephants' feet as the keepers would
allow; but, after all, they were driven off a good deal and had to keep
stealing back. They gave the elephants apples and bits of cracker and
cake, and some tried to put tobacco into their trunks, though they knew
ve