ircus poster.

Saturday afternoon when we went by the enginehouse, its brick wall
fluttered with the rags and tatters of "Esther, the Beautiful Queen,"
and the lecture on "The Republic: Will it Endure?" (Gee! But that was
exciting!) Sunday morning, after Sunday-school, there was a sudden
quickening among the boys. We stopped nibbling on the edges of the
lesson leaf and followed the crowd in scuttling haste. Miraculously,
over-night, the shabby wall had blossomed into thralling splendor. What
was Daniel in the Lions' Den, compared with Herr Alexander in the same?
Not, as the prophet is pictured, in the farthest corner from the lions,
and manifestly saying to himself: "If I was only out of this!" But with
his head right smack dab in the lion's mouth. Right in it. Yes, sir.

"S' Posin'!" we gasped, all goggle-eyed, "jist s'posin' that there lion
was to shut his mouth! Ga-ash!"

The Golden Text? It faded before the lemon-and-scarlet glories of the
Golden Chariot. Drawn by sixteen dappled steeds, each with his neck
arching like a fish-hook and reined with fancy scalloped reins, it
occupied the center of the foreground. The band rode in it, far more
fortunate than our local band whose best was, Charley Wells's depot
'bus. And nobler than all his fellows was the bass-drummer. He had a
canopy over him, a carved and golden canopy, on whose top revolved a
clown's head with its tongue stuck out. On each quarter of this rococo
shallop a golden circus-girl in short skirts gaily skipped rope with
a nubia or fascinator, or whatever it is the women call the thing they
wrap around their heads in cold weather when they hang out the clothes.
There were big pieces of looking-glass let into the sides of the
band-wagon, and every decorator knows that when you put looking-glass on
a thing it is impossible to fix it so that it will be any finer.

Winding back and forth across the picture was the long train of
tableau-cars and animal cages, diminishing with distance until away,
'way up in the upper left-hand corner the hindmost van was all immersed
in the blue-and-yellow haze just this side of out-of-sight. That with
our own eyes we should behold the glories here set forth we knew right
well. Cruel Fortune might cheat us of the raptures to be had inside the
tents, but the street-parade was ours, for it was free.

It seems to me that we did not linger so long before these pictures, nor
before those of the rare and costly animals, which, if w