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know."
If a fellow just only could run off with a circus! Wouldn't it be great? No more splitting kindling and carrying in coal; no more: "Hurry up, now, or you'll be late for school;" no more poking along in a humdrum existence, never going any place or seeing anything, but the glad, free, untrammeled life, the life of a circus-boy, standing up on top of somebody's head (you could pretend he was your daddy. Who'd ever know the difference?) and your leg stuck up like five minutes to six, and him standing on top of a horse - and the horse going around the ring, and the ring master cracking his whip - aw, say! How about it?
Maybe the show-people would take you even if you didn't have two joints to common folks' one, and hadn't had early advantages in the way of plenty of snakes to try the grease out of. And then . . . and then. . . . Travel all around, and be in a new town every day! And see things! The water-works, and Main Street, and the Soldiers' Monument, and the Second Presbyterian Church. All the sights there are to see in strange places. And then when the show came back to your own home-town next year, people would wonder whose was that slim and gracile figure in the green silk tights and spangled breech-clout that capered so nimbly on the bounding courser's back, that switched the natty switch and shrilly called out: "Hep! Hep!" They'd screw up their eyes to look hard, and they'd say: "Yes, sir. It is. It's him. It's Willie Bigelow. Well, of all things!" And they'd clap their hands, and be so proud of you. And they'd wonder how it was that they could have been so blind to your many merits when they had you with them. They'd feel sorry that they ever said you were a "regular little imp," if ever there was one, and that you had the Old Boy in you as big as a horse. They'd feel ashamed of themselves, so they would. And they'd come and apologize to you for the way they had acted, and you'd say: "Oh, that's all right. Forgive and forget." And they'd miss you at home, too. Your daddy would wish he hadn't whaled you the way he did, just for nothing at all. And your mother, too, she'd be sorry for the way she acted to you, tormenting the life and soul out of you, sending you on errands just when you got a man in the king row, and making you wash your feet in a bucket before you went to bed, instead of being satisfied to let you pump on them, as any reasonable mother would. She'll think about that when you're gone. It'll be lonesome then, with nobody to bang the doors, and upset the cream-pitcher on the clean table-cloth, and fall over backward in the rocking-chair and break a rocker off. Your daddy will sigh and say:
"I wonder where Willie is to-night. Poor boy, I sometimes fear I was too harsh with him." And your mother will try to keep back her tears, but she can't, and first thing she knows she'll burst out crying, and . . . and . . . and old Maje will go around the house looking for you, and whining because he can't find his little playmate . . . . It will seem as if you were dead - dead to them, and . . . . Smf! Smf!
(Confound that orchestra leader anyhow! How many times have I got to tell him that this is the music-cue for "Where is My Wandering Boy To-night?")
We were all going to get up early enough to see the show come in at the depot. Very few of us did it. Somehow we couldn't seem to wake up. Here and there a hardy spirit compasses the feat.
All the town is asleep when this boy slips out of his front-gate and snicks the latch behind him softly. It is very still, so still that though he is more than a mile away from the railroad he can hear Johnny Mara, the night yardmaster, bawl out: "Run them three empties over on Number Four track!" the short exhaust of the obedient pony-engine, and the succeeding crash of the cars as they bump against their fellows. It is very still, scarey still. The gas-lamp flaring and flickering among the green maples at the corner has a strange look to him. His footfalls on the sidewalk sound so loud he takes the soft middle of the
If a fellow just only could run off with a circus! Wouldn't it be great? No more splitting kindling and carrying in coal; no more: "Hurry up, now, or you'll be late for school;" no more poking along in a humdrum existence, never going any place or seeing anything, but the glad, free, untrammeled life, the life of a circus-boy, standing up on top of somebody's head (you could pretend he was your daddy. Who'd ever know the difference?) and your leg stuck up like five minutes to six, and him standing on top of a horse - and the horse going around the ring, and the ring master cracking his whip - aw, say! How about it?
Maybe the show-people would take you even if you didn't have two joints to common folks' one, and hadn't had early advantages in the way of plenty of snakes to try the grease out of. And then . . . and then. . . . Travel all around, and be in a new town every day! And see things! The water-works, and Main Street, and the Soldiers' Monument, and the Second Presbyterian Church. All the sights there are to see in strange places. And then when the show came back to your own home-town next year, people would wonder whose was that slim and gracile figure in the green silk tights and spangled breech-clout that capered so nimbly on the bounding courser's back, that switched the natty switch and shrilly called out: "Hep! Hep!" They'd screw up their eyes to look hard, and they'd say: "Yes, sir. It is. It's him. It's Willie Bigelow. Well, of all things!" And they'd clap their hands, and be so proud of you. And they'd wonder how it was that they could have been so blind to your many merits when they had you with them. They'd feel sorry that they ever said you were a "regular little imp," if ever there was one, and that you had the Old Boy in you as big as a horse. They'd feel ashamed of themselves, so they would. And they'd come and apologize to you for the way they had acted, and you'd say: "Oh, that's all right. Forgive and forget." And they'd miss you at home, too. Your daddy would wish he hadn't whaled you the way he did, just for nothing at all. And your mother, too, she'd be sorry for the way she acted to you, tormenting the life and soul out of you, sending you on errands just when you got a man in the king row, and making you wash your feet in a bucket before you went to bed, instead of being satisfied to let you pump on them, as any reasonable mother would. She'll think about that when you're gone. It'll be lonesome then, with nobody to bang the doors, and upset the cream-pitcher on the clean table-cloth, and fall over backward in the rocking-chair and break a rocker off. Your daddy will sigh and say:
"I wonder where Willie is to-night. Poor boy, I sometimes fear I was too harsh with him." And your mother will try to keep back her tears, but she can't, and first thing she knows she'll burst out crying, and . . . and . . . and old Maje will go around the house looking for you, and whining because he can't find his little playmate . . . . It will seem as if you were dead - dead to them, and . . . . Smf! Smf!
(Confound that orchestra leader anyhow! How many times have I got to tell him that this is the music-cue for "Where is My Wandering Boy To-night?")
We were all going to get up early enough to see the show come in at the depot. Very few of us did it. Somehow we couldn't seem to wake up. Here and there a hardy spirit compasses the feat.
All the town is asleep when this boy slips out of his front-gate and snicks the latch behind him softly. It is very still, so still that though he is more than a mile away from the railroad he can hear Johnny Mara, the night yardmaster, bawl out: "Run them three empties over on Number Four track!" the short exhaust of the obedient pony-engine, and the succeeding crash of the cars as they bump against their fellows. It is very still, scarey still. The gas-lamp flaring and flickering among the green maples at the corner has a strange look to him. His footfalls on the sidewalk sound so loud he takes the soft middle of the