Harper's Young People, April 4, 1882 / An Illustrated Weekly

Author of Toby Tyler, Tim and Tip, etc.
Why, we could start a circus jest as easy as a wink, Toby, 'cause you know all about one; an' all you'd have to do would be to tell us fellers what to do, an' we'd 'tend to the rest.

Yes; but you see we hain't got a tent, or hosses, or wagons, or nothin', an' I don't see how you could get a circus up that way; and the speaker hugged his knees as he rocked himself to and fro in a musing way on the rather sharp point of a large rock, on which he had seated himself in order to hear what his companion had to say that was so important.
Will you come down with me to Bob Atwood's, an' see what he says about it?
Yes, I'll do that if you'll come out afterward for a game of I-spy round the meetin'-house.
All right; if we can find enough of the other fellers, I will.
Then the boys slipped down from the rocks, found the cows, and drove them home as the preface to their visit to Bob Atwood's.
The boy who was so anxious to start a circus was a little fellow with such a wonderful amount of remarkably red hair that he was seldom called anything but Reddy, although his name was known—by his parents, at least—to be Walter Grant. His companion was Toby Tyler, a boy who, a year before, had thought it would be a very pleasant thing to run away from his uncle Daniel and the town of Guilford in order to be with a circus, and who, in ten weeks, was only too glad to run back home as rapidly as possible.
During the first few months after his return many brilliant offers had been made Toby by his companions to induce him to aid them in starting an amateur circus; but he had refused to have anything to do with the schemes, and for several reasons. During the ten weeks he had been away he had seen quite as much of a circus life as he cared to see, without even such a mild dose as this amateur show would be; and again, whenever he thought of the matter, the remembrance of the death of his monkey, Mr. Stubbs, would come upon him so vividly, and cause him so much sorrow, that he resolutely put the matter from his mind.