第38章 CIRCUS DAY(3)

But some of the boys lay there in the grass with their hands under their heads, looking up at the sky, and making little white spots come in and out on the corners of their jaws, they had their teeth set so hard, and were chewing so fiercely. You could almost hear their minds creak, scheming, scheming, scheming. I suppose there were ways for boys to make money in those times, but they always fizzled out when you came to try them, to say nothing of the way they broke into your day. Why, you had scarcely any time to play in. You 'd go 'round to some neighbor's house with a magazine, and you'd say: "Good afternoon, Mrs. Slaymaker. Do you want to subscribe for this?" Just the way you had studied out you would say. And she'd take it, and go sit down with it, and read it clear through while you played with the dog, and then when she got all through with it, and had read all the advertisements, she'd hand it back to you and say: No, she didn't believe she would. They had so many books and papers now that she didn't get a chance hardly to read in any of them, let alone taking any new ornes. Were you getting many new subscribers? _ Just commenced, eh? Well, she wished you all the luck in the world. How was your ma? That's good. Did she hear from your Uncle John's folks since they moved out to Kansas?

I have heard that there were boys who, under the dire necessity of going to the circus, got together enough rags, old iron, and bottles to make up the price, sold 'em, collected the money, and went. Idon't believe it. I don't believe it. We all had, hidden under the back porch, our treasure-heap of rusty grates, cracked fire-pots, broken griddles and lid-lifters, tub-hoops and pokers, but I do not believe that any human boy ever collected fifty cents' worth. Iwant you to understand that fifty cents is a whole lot of money, particularly when it is laid out in scrap-iron. Only the tin-wagon takes rags, and they pay in tinware, and that's no good to a boy that wants to go to the circus. And as for bottles - well, sir, you wash out a whole, whole lot of bottles, a whole big lot of 'em, a wash-basket full, and tote 'em down to Mr. Case's drug- and book-store, as much as ever you and your brother can wag, and see what he gives you. It's simply scandalous. You have no idea of how mean and stingy a man can be until you try to sell him old bottles.

And the cold-hearted way in which he will throw back ink-bottles that you worked so hard to clean, and the ones that have reading blown into the glass - Oh, it's enough to set you against business transactions all your life long. There's something about bargain and sale that's mean and censorious, finding this fault and finding that fault, and paying just as little as ever they can. It gets on one's nerves. It really does.

The boys that made the little white spots come on the corners of their jaws as they lay there in the grass, scheming, scheming, scheming, planned rags, and bottles, and scrap-iron, and more also.

Sometimes it was a plan so much bigger that if they had kept it to themselves, like the darkey's cow, they would have "all swole up and died.""Sst! Come here once. Tell you sumpum. Now don't you go and blab it out, now will you? Hope to die? Well . . . . Now, no kiddin'.

Cross your heart? Well . . . . Ah, you will, too. I know you.

You go and tattle everything you hear . . . . Well. . . . Cheese it! Here comes somebody. Make out we're talkin' about sumpum else.

Ah, he did, did he? What for, I wonder? (Say sumpum, can't ye?)Why 'nu' ye say sumpum when he was goin' by? Now he'll suspicion sumpum 's up, and nose around till he . . . . Aw, they ain't no use tellin' you anything . . . . Well. Put your head over so 's I can whisper. Sure I am. . . . Well, I could learn, couldn't I? Now don't you tell a living soul, will you? If anybody asts you, you tell 'em you don't know anything at all about it. Say, why 'n't you come along? I promised you the last time. That's jist your mother callin' you. Let on you don't hear her. Aw, stay. Aw, you don't either have to go. Say. Less you and me get up early, and go see the circus come in town, will you? I will, if you will.

All right. Remember now. Don't you tell anybody what I told you.

You 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.