olicemen on
duty could properly attend to, so that half of them had leisure to step
into Madam Delia's tent, and see little Gerty and the rattlesnakes. It
was past the appointed hour; but the exhibition had never yet been
known to open for less than ten spectators, and even the addition of
the policemen only made eight. So the mistress of the show sat in
resolute expectation, a little defiant of the human race. It was her
thirteenth annual tour, and she knew mankind.

Surely there were people enough; surely they had money enough; surely
they were easily pleased. They gathered in crowds to hear crazy Mrs.
Green denouncing the city government for sending her to the poorhouse
in a wagon instead of a carriage. They thronged to inspect the load of
hay that was drawn by the two horses whose harness had been cut to
pieces, and then repaired by Denison's Eureka Cement. They all bought
whips with that unfailing readiness which marks a rural crowd; they
bought packages of lead-pencils with a dollar so skilfully distributed
through every six parcels that the oldest purchaser had never found
more than ten cents in his. They let the man who cured neuralgia rub
his magic curative on their foreheads, and allowed the man who cleaned
watch-chains to dip theirs in the purifying powder. They twirled the
magic arrow, which never by any chance rested at the corner
compartments where the gold watches and the heavy bracelets were piled,
but perpetually recurred to the side stations, and indicated only a
beggarly prize of india-rubber sleeve-buttons. They bought ten cents'
worth of jewelry, obtaining a mingled treasure of two breast-pins, a
plain gold ring, an enamelled ring, and "a piece of California gold."
But still no added prizes in the human lottery fell to the show-tent of
Madam Delia.

As time went on and the day grew warmer, the crowd grew visibly less
enterprising, and business flagged. The man with the lifting-machine
pulled at the handles himself, a gratuitous exhibition before a circle
of boys now penniless. The man with the metallic polish dipped and
redipped his own watch-chain. The men at the booths sat down to lunch
upon the least presentable of their own pies. The proprietor of the
magic arrow, who had already two large breastpins on his dirty shirt,
selected from his own board another to grace his coat-collar, as if
thereby to summon back the waning fortunes of the day. But Madam Delia
still sat at her post, undaunted. She