THEY were great friends, Robert Truesdale and Claire Waterman. During the long, bright summer at the seashore they spent as much time together as possible, and discussed all sorts of questions. They had opinions concerning everything under the sun, and agreed so well, generally, that to find a subject upon which they totally differed only added interest to the summer.

One of these subjects was found one morning when they sat together on the beach. It began—that is, the discussion did—by Robert’s making the astonishing statement that he never went to circuses.

Claire stopped playing with the sand which she was letting run idly through her fingers, and turned so that she could see his face. “How very queer!” she said; “I thought all boys went to circuses. Did you never go?”

“I went once,” said Robert, low-voiced, “when I was quite a little fellow, and that was once too often. I never cared to try it again.”

“I cannot imagine why. I think circuses are splendid. We never go in the city, of course. Why, they don’t have circuses in cities, do they? But I go to my Auntie’s every summer for two months—I always have until this summer—and Uncle West takes us children to the circus just as regularly. That is the reason I like the country so much better than the city, you can go to such queer out-of-door things. And I think the little circus ponies are too cunning for anything; I have always wanted one for my own. Mamma laughs, and says she doesn’t know but I will be a circus rider when I grow up—and then the clown is so funny. Why don’t you want to go, Robert? What happened when you went once? Was there an accident?”

“No,” said Robert slowly, “I suppose not; I am afraid it was an every-day affair. It is a long story, Claire, and begins away back of that day. I have been brought up differently from you, you know. My father was a minister, and he and my mother did not approve of shows of that kind, and I was never taken to them when I was a small boy. I never heard nor thought much about them; we lived in a large town, but not too large for the traveling circus; but I got the idea, somehow, that only low people attended such places, and never coaxed to go.”

Claire exclaimed over this, “Why, Robert, where my Auntie lives everybody goes, only the minister and a few old dried-up people.”

“Yes, I know,” said Robert gravely; “some people in the country have different views from those which my father and mother had; but I did not know it when I was a little chap; I thought that all respectable people thought alike. The first time I changed my ideas any was when I had gone to spend the year with my Grandmother in the country—that was the summer after mother died, and my father had died the winter before. I found that a great many country people went to circuses. All the boys and girls who went to school with me in the little old schoolhouse were looking forward to going as a matter of course; and I heard more talk about the circus that summer than I had ever heard in my life before. I began to want to go very much. The more I talked with the boys, the more I became convinced that it was because my father was a minister that I had been held away from such places. ‘Of course ministers ought not to go,’ I told myself, ‘because’—and there I would have to stop; I knew no reason why they should not go where other people did, and could not reason about it any better than some grown people can nowadays; still I called it a settled point, and began to coax my grandmother to let me go to the circus. ‘Just this once,’ I said to her; ‘I want to see for myself.’

“I have never understood how she came to let me have my way, unless it was because she was a very indulgent grandmother, and pitied the orphan boy, and could not bear to say ‘No.’ Any way, I received permission, and the necessary quarter of a dollar, and started off in great glee.

“I ought to tell you,” he continued, after a slight hesitation—and the flush on his brown cheek deepened a little—“that although I was only a little fellow ten years old, I was a member of the church, and was trying to live my religion. There was a ragged little boy not much older than myself, very ignorant and neglected, but a leader in all sorts of mischief, whom I had had ambitions to help. I had been kind to him, instead of making sport of his rags, as the other boys did, until I had a certain sort of influence over him, and he had partly promised me to try to be a better boy.

“Well, I went to the circus, and saw the ponies, and heard the jokes, and was delighted; but as I stood around outside afterwards, open-mouthed and open-eyed, I saw two of the men whom I had most admired in the ring, fighting. They had been drinking just enough to make them quarrelsome, and such horrid oaths as they were using I had never even imagined possible before. I stood still with fright and horror and watched the blows, and listened to the vile language, until somebody touched my elbow, and there was little Pete, the ragged boy. He was grinning wickedly. ‘My eyes!’ he said, ‘was you in there?’ nodding toward the tent. ‘I was struck all of a heap when I see you come out. I didn’t think this kind was for you. I thought you belonged to the “goody-goodies,” you know. Miss Wheeler, she said when she was talking to us fellows about it, “O, no! Robert Truesdale won’t go to the circus, I am sure; he is his father’s own boy, and is walking the same road he did.” I guess you got off the road this time, didn’t you?’

“I do not believe I shall ever forget the wicked leer in the little fellow’s face as he said those words; and I am sure I shall never forget the feeling of shame which I had as I looked at those two dreadful men with the blood streaming down their faces, and the vile words streaming from their mouths, and realized that I had spent my afternoon in laughing at their speeches, and had been found out of the road in which my father had walked—so far out that this street boy had noticed it! I turned and ran away as fast and as far as I could, and I do not think I shall ever attend another circus.”

“How very strange!” said Claire; “but then, after all, Robert, bad men will swear and drink and fight. You did not make them any worse by going to see them ride.”

“I can’t be sure of that, Claire. What if my twenty-five cents helped to encourage them to live the life which kept them in the midst of such temptations? That is what good men who have studied and thought about these things say of the circus. Besides,” and here the boy’s face took on a little touch of lofty scorn, “I want to grow up to be such a character that the jokes and jumpings of evil men cannot amuse me; I want to learn to be above them. Then you see what the ragged little street boy thought?”

“Yes,” said Claire gravely; “I never thought much about it; I just went, of course, because the others did, but I shouldn’t like to be counted on that side, exactly. Robert, maybe I won’t go any more. I must think about it.”

Myra Spafford.