shillings a night, plenty of men can be had who
will risk their lives ten times.

Many young and old folks imagine that the
clown who writhes so comically under the lash
of the ring-master, and who dives without
introduction among the people in the pit, and
whose whole existence seems one round of jokes
and heads-over-heels, and an occasional
personal "turn," is a merry fellow, happy as the
day is long. I know better. I know one
Circus clown yet living, and not yet an old
man, whose countenance could, and still does,
set the audience and the actors, down to the very
sawdust-raker, in a roar. Poor fellow! Once
upon a time when his duties called him to the
Circus, his only son, a lad of seven, was lying on
his death-bed. He was left in charge of his
sister, a girl of ten. Before his first entry
into the ring for the evening, he came to me
in tears. "Oh, Joe, I've got to be funny
to-night, and my boy, my dear Willy, dying all
the while! And yet I must go in." While we
talked, the bell rang for his entry, and in he
went, amid the roars of a crowded house.
After a short interval he had again to appear;
but, in that interval, the servant of the lodging-
house brought word that Willy was dead. My
poor friend was nearly distracted; yet the
inevitable bell rang again, and he went in once
more. The newspaper next day said that he
had excelled himself. So he had.

There is one remarkable point of Circus
economy, worth thinking of. How is it that
we never find in the bills of the National
Hippodrome, such announcements as we find
frequently in the bills of the theatres? For
instance, we never find that the Courier of St.
Petersburg is to be performed by "a young
gentleman, his first appearance on horseback;"
or that "Miss Cora Montressor will make her
début on the corde élastique." No. Circus
people never make "first appearances," in the
common sense of the term; they are indigenous
to the sawdust, as their fathers and mothers
were before them. They must be all bred to
the work. The artists of the Circus, in most
instances, fulfil a long bondage of gratuitous labour
—fourteen years generally, and in some cases
twenty-one. Their fathers and mothers being in
"the profession" before them, they commence
their studies at perhaps two years of age. I have
seen a score or two of tiny tumblers hard at
work at that tender period of existence. There
is no going into the Circus without
preparation. On the stage of a Theatre, an ignorant
pretender who knows nothing of the passions,
may pretend to embody them, every one,
for me (though I know better), without hurting
himself. Let him make as free with a horse as
with King Lear, and he will find his collar-bone
the worse for it.

Consequently, all Circus people must work
hard and long. How hard they work to be sure!
But then, as an old acrobat once said to me, "it
is practice as does it; once at it, they daren't
stop, but must go on till the end." And so the
child becomes father to the man, and the infant
Romeo in due time swells into the great
Professor Montagu de Capulet, who, as a matter
of course, exhibits his glittering spangles before
all the crowned heads of Europe. The acrobatic
child is quick to learn, for all his faculties are
preternaturally shapened by rubbing against
those about him. When the children of society
are at school he is drawing money to "the
concern," and can pick up pins with the corners
of his eyes as he bends back and over, and can
throw fore springs, head springs, and lion leaps;
can, in short, do a hundred odd things to earn
applause and money. It is no joke to rehearse
with bodily hard work all day, and then work at
night. I have had to change my dress thirteen
times in the course of a night, because, when
not otherwise engaged, I had to dress in a
smart uniform and stand at the entrance way, to
be ready to hold balloons, garters, poles, what-
ever else was required. All who enter a Circus
are engaged for "general utility."

In the summer-time we go a "tenting." That
is the word now in use among Circus people to
describe their mode of doing business in the
country. It is an improvement on the old
mountebanking system. Tenting continues from
about April to October, and it involves a great
amount of travelling—the whole process
partaking more or less (especially when business is
good) of a holiday character, but it is not, of
course, all play even to the curious nomadic
race who are engaged in it, and who are
undoubtedly its most successful professors.

The system of working is very simple. A
large tent, generally about a hundred and
twenty feet in diameter, having been procured,
and the various ofiicials being well trained in
their business, the work of the summer can at
once begin. During the winter, a route, which
will occupy a month or two to travel, has been
mapped out, and about a fortnight before the
town season has been brought to a close, "the
agent in advance," or go-a-head, as he is now
called—a gentleman whose salary and expenses
for travelling will cost "the concern" about
twelve pounds a week—accompanied by a bill-
sticker, starts off in advance of the troupe. His
duties are to engage suitable ground for the
encampment, stalls for the horses, and to "wake
up" the natives with a display of gaudy bills stuck
up at all the points of vantage along the route.
It is also part of the business of this functionary
to talk the concern he represents into notoriety;
he must bounce at the various taverns at which
he stops about the magnitude of the stud, the
beauty of the animals, the ability of the company,
and the immense "business" they have
always done on their tenting tours.

The company and Circus "traps"—i.e. properties
of all kinds fixed up in a score of huge
waggons—start, perhaps, about six o'clock in the
morning, according to the distance to be gone
over, which, on the average of the season, may
be twelve miles a day. Waggon after waggon
defiles from the ground, till all are gone: the
band carriage, gaudily decorated, containing the