FullReads

At noon, we sat about in the shade of the trees along the wall, and ate delicious cold food from the butter-boxes and baskets our men-folks had brought over during the forenoon lull; and we assiduously offered Sudleigh a drink, whenever it passed the counter where barrels of free spring-water had been set. And then, at the first possible moment, we paid our fee, and went inside the tent to see the animals. That scrubby menagerie had not gained in dignity from its transference to canvas walls. The enclosure was very hot and stuffy; there was a smell of dust and straw. The lion stretched himself, from time to time, and gave an angry roar for savage, long-lost joys. One bear, surely new to the business, kept walking up and down, up and down, moaning, in an abandon of homesickness. Brad Freeman stood before the cage when I was there.

“Say, Brad,” said the Crane boy, slipping his arm into the hunter’s, in a good-fellowship sure to be reciprocated. “Davie Tolman said you’s goin’ to fetch over your fox, an’ sell him to the circus. Be you?”

“My Lord!” answered Brad, very violently for him, the ever-tolerant. “No! I’m goin’ to let him go. Look at that!” And while the Crane boy, unconcerned, yet puzzled, gave his full attention to the bear, Brad passed on.

There was a wolf, I remember, darting about his cage, slinking, furtive, ever on a futile prowl. He especially engaged the interest of Tom McNeil, who said admiringly, as I, too, looked through the bars, “Ain’t he a prompt little cuss?” I felt that with Tom it was the fascination of opposites; he never could understand superlative energy.

Just as we were trooping into the larger tent (there were no three rings, I beg to say, maliciously calculated to distract the attention! One, of a goodly size, was quite enough for us!) a little voice piped up, “The snake’s got loose!” How we surged and panted, and fought one another for our sacred lives! In vain were we urged to stand still; we strove the more. And when a bit of rope perversely and maliciously coiled itself round Rosa Tolman’s ankle, she gave a shriek so loud and despairing that it undid us anew. If Sheriff Holmes had not come forward and sworn at us, I believe we should have trampled one another out of existence; but he seemed so palpably the embodiment of authority, and his oath the oath undoubtedly selected by legislature for that very occasion, that we paused, and on the passionate asseveration of a circus man that the snake was safely in his cage, consented to be calm. But Aunt Melissa Adams, unstrung by her earlier experience, would trust no doubtful circumstance. She plodded back into the animal-tent, assured herself, with her own eyes, of the snake’s presence at his own hearthstone, and came back satisfied, just as the clown entered the ring. The performance needs no bush. We had palmleaf fans offered us, pop-corn, and pink lemonade. We sweltered under the blazing canvas, laughed at the clown’s musty fooling, which deserved rather the reverence due old age, and wondered between whiles if there would be a shower, and if tent-poles were ever struck. Then it was all over, and we trailed out, in great bodily discomfort and spiritual joy, to witness, quite unlooked for, the most vivid drama of the day. Young Dana Marden was there, he and his wife who lived down in Tiverton Hollow. Dana was a nephew of Josh, of hapless memory, and “folks said” that, like Josh, he had “all the Marden setness, once git him riled.” But Mary Worthen had not been in the least afraid of that when she married him. Before their engagement, some one had casually mentioned Dana’s having inherited “setness” for his patrimony.

“I know it,” she said, “and if I had anything to do with him, I’d break him of it, or I’d break his neck!”