e but knew it,
were the main reason why we were permitted to go (if we did get to go).
To look at these animals is improving to the mind, and since we could
not go alone, an older person had to accompany us, and... and... I trust
I make myself clear. But we didn't want to improve our minds if it was
a possible thing to avoid it. The pictures of these animals were in
the joggerfy book anyhow, though not in colors, unless we had a box
of paints. There can be no doubt that the show-bill pictures of the
menageries were in colors. I seem to recollect that Mr. Galbraith, who
kept the dry-goods store across the street from the engine-house, was
very much exercised in his mind about the way one of these pictures was
printed. It was the counterfeit presentment of the Hip-po-pot-a-mus,
or Behemoth of Holy Writ. His objection to the hip--you know was not
because its open countenance was so fearsome, but because it was so red.
Six feet by two of flaming crimson across the street in the afternoon
sun made it necessary for him to take the goods to the back window of
the store to show to customers. He didn't like it a bit.

No. Neither before the large and expensive pictures of the
street-parade, nor the large and expensive wild beasts did we linger.
The swarm was thickest, sand the jabbering loudest, the "O-o-oh's," the
"M! Looky's" the "Geeminently's" shrillest, in front of where the deeds
of high emprise were set forth. Men with their fists clenched on their
breasts, and their neatly slippered toes touching the backs of their
heads, crashed through paper-covered hoops beneath which horses madly
coursed; they flew through the air with the greatest of ease, the daring
young men on the flying; trapeze, or they posed in living pyramids.

And as the sons of men assembled themselves together, Satan came also,
the spirit I, that evermore denies.

"A-a-ah!" sneers his embodiment in one whose crackling voice cannot
make up its mind whether to be bass or treble, "A-a-ah, to the show they
down't do hay-uf what they is in the pitchers."

A chilling silence follows. A cold uneasiness strikes into all the
listeners. We are all made wretched by destructive criticism. Let us
alone in our ideals. Let us alone, can't you?

"Now... now," pursues the crackle-voiced Mephisto, pointing to where
Japanese jugglers defy the law of gravitation and other experiences of
daily life, "now, they cain't walk up no ladder made out o' reel sharp
swords."

"T