They have all the fun. When they
go they don't have to poke along, and poke along, and keep hold of
hands so as not to get lost. . . . Aw, hurry up, can't you? Don't
you hear the band playing? It'll be all over before we get there.
But finally the lots are reached, and there are the tents, with all
kinds of flags snapping from the centerpoles and the guy-ropes.
And there are the sideshows. Alas! You never thought of the
sideshows when you asked if you could go. And now it's too late.
It must be fine in the side-shows. I never got to go to one. I
didn't have the money. But if the big, painted banners, bulging in
and out, as the wind plays with them, are anything to go by, it must
be something grand to see the Fat Lady, and the Circassian Beauty,
whose frizzled head will just about fit a bushel basket, and the
Armless Wonder. They say he can take a pair of scissors with his
toes and cut your picture out of paper just elegant.
Oh, and something else you miss by going in the afternoon. At night
you can sneak around at the back, and when nobody is looking you
can just lift up the canvas and go right in for nothing . . . . Why,
what's wrong about that? Ah, you're too particular . . . . And if
the canvasman catches you, you can commence to cry and say you had
only forty cents, and wanted to see the circus so bad, and he'll take
it and let you in, and you can have ten cents, don't you see, to
spend for lemonade, red lemonade, you understand; and peanuts, the
littlest bags, and the "on-riest" peanuts that ever were.
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