erations of them had
never even so much as seen a lion.

"And is that all the difference, pa, that the lion roars at night and
the ostrich in the daytime?"

Out on the back porch in the deepening dusk we sat, with eyes relaxed
and dreaming, and watched the stars that powdered the dark sky. Before
our inward vision passed in review the day of splendor and renown. We
sighed, at last, but it was the happy sigh of him who has full dined.
Ambition was digesting. In our turn, when we grew up, we, too, were to
do the deeds of high emprise. We were to be somebody.

(I never heard of anybody sitting up to see the show depart. And yet it
seems to me that would be the best time to run off with it.)

The next day we visited the lots. It was no dream. See the litter that
mussed up the place.

We were all there. None had heard the man that runs the show say
genially: "Yes, I think we can arrange to take you with us." Here was
the ring; here the tent-pole holes, and here a scrap of paper torn from
a hoop the bareback rider leaped through.... Oh, now I know what I was
going to tell you that the clown said. The comicalest thing!

He picked up one of these hoops and began to sniffle.

So the ring-master asked him what he was crying about.

"I--I--was thinking of my mother. Smf! My good old mother!"

So the ring-master asked him what made him think of his mother.

"This." And he held up the paper-covered hoop.

The ring-master couldn't see how that put the clown in mind of his
mother. He was awful dumb, that man.

"It looks just like the pancakes she used to make for us."

Well, sir, we just hollered and laughed at that. And after we had
quieted down a little, the ringmaster says: "As big as that?"

"Bigger," says the clown. "Why, she used to make 'em so big we used 'em
for bedclothes."

"Indeed" (Just like that. He took it all in, just as if it was so.)

"Oh, my, yes! I mind one time I was sleeping with my little brother, and
I waked up just as cold--Brr! But I was cold!"

"But how could that be, sir? You just now said you had pancakes for
bedclothes."

"Yes, but my little brother got hungry in the night, and et up all the
cover."

Laugh? Why, they screamed. Me? I thought I'd just about go up. But the
ring master never cracked a smile. He didn't see the joke at all.

Good-by, old clown, friend of our childhood, goodby, good-by forever!
And you, our other friend, the street parade, must you go, too? And you,
the g