IT is safe to say that nine men out of ten—and the tenth man is to be sincerely pitied—looking back, find their starting point in a circus. Next to the maternal shoe, which hung in terrorem over the Lares and Penates, and which will never fade from the memory, my most distant recollection is beneath the canvass. Was there ever such a funny man as the clown? I hung upon his stale wit as Hamlet hung upon Yorick. Were there ever such angels as those ethereal, beautiful, gauzy, smiling women who rode round the ring—now, alas, bandy-legged, lath-armed, tinseled, painted, disconsolate looking creatures, whose whole world is within the narrow limits of the ring?

Did Arabia produce such fiery steeds, brave in gaily caparisoned trappings—now, poor old hacks, full of the spirit of the tread-mill—not all the yells of rider, clown and ringmaster, not all the brutal lashings of whip and thong, can force beyond their customary gait?

Were there ever such candies and cakes and pop corn as that boy peddled whom I used to envy?

Name the sum I would not have given to have been the bugle man who blew "Silver Moon" so gorgeously!

And then I passed from one sphere of Elysium to another when, after the circus, I went to the side-show and saw the fat woman, and the skeleton man, and the calf with three legs, and the dog with two heads, the man who swallowed the sword and the man who took the snake's head in his mouth. And I went home and dreamed that I was ring-master, gorgeous in silver lace, with a long whip which I snapped at the clown, and, rapture of raptures, did I not help the angels to mount their horses? Talk not of the realities of life by the side of that circus, which was an enchanted land!

As I look back to that circus, I see my first original sin or concatenation of sins.

Am I not he who informed my parents that I was going to see another little boy?

Am I not he who stole a watermelon from our neighbor's patch?

Am I not he who took it to old Bliffkins, who lived under the hill, and sold it to him for a shilling?

Am I not he who with the shilling walked two miles, and then found it cost a quarter to get into the circus? Was there ever such a monster as the man at the door, who wouldn't let me in?

I have never known such griefs as my grief that day. I hung round the outside of that tent as sinners are supposed to hang round the walls of Heaven. I heard the music and the hip-hips and the cheers and the snaps of the whips, and in my desperation I tried to look under the canvass, but was detected in the act by the monster at the door, and obliged to fly for my life. I have never known a grief so poignant as that.

I pity the man who has not sinned in his boyhood, all for a circus. He has missed one of the luxuries of life which can hardly find compensation in an Æon of virtue.

June 15, 1867.