"Hay! Wait for me, you fellows! Hay! Hold on a minute. Well,
ain't I a-comin' jis''s fast's ever I kin? What's your rush?"
It is the exceptional boy has this experience. The normal one
preserves the delicate bloom of romance, by never seeing the
show until it makes its Grand Triumphal Entree in a Pageant of
Unparalleled Magnificence far Surpassing the Pomp and
Splendor of Oriental Potentates.
The hitching-posts are full of whinnering country horses, and
people are in town you wouldn't think existed if you hadn't seen
their pictures in Puck and Yudge, people from over by Muchinippi,
and out Noodletoozy way, big, red-necked men with the long loping
step that comes from walking on the plowed ground. Following
them are lanky women with their front teeth gone, and their figures
bowed by drudgery, dragging wide-eyed children whose uncouth finery
betrays the "country jake," even if the freckles and the sun-bleached
hair could keep the secret. From the far-off fastnesses, where
there are still log-cabins chinked with mud, they have ventured to
see the show come into town, and when they have seen that, they will
retire again beyond our ken. How every sense is numbed and stunned
by the magnificence and splendor of the painted and gilded wagons as
they rumble past, the driver rolling and pitching in his seat, as he
handles the ribbons of eight horses all at once! The farmer's heart
is filled with admiration of his craft, as much as the children's
hearts are at the gaudy pictures.
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