On the Road With a Circus

EAGER THRONG AT THE MAIN ENTRANCE.
W. C. THOMPSON
NEW YORK NEW AMSTERDAM BOOK COMPANY 1905
Copyright, 1903, By W. C. Thompson Copyright, 1905, By New Amsterdam Book Company On the Road With a Circus.


ON THE ROAD WITH A CIRCUS
The faithful recording of daily life with one of the “big shows,” wandering with it under all vicissitudes, fortunate or adverse, is the errand on which this book is sent. You and I will travel from the distraction and tumult of the summer season to the congenial quiet of winter quarters, and survey operations from the hour when new and unwonted scenes and sounds startle city quiet or country seat retirement until the stealthy breaking of the white encampment and the departure from town. We will scrutinize the entrance of strangers into strange lands and observe the rising and expansion of the tents as an army of men stamp their image upon the earth. Our astonished eye will gaze upon the gorgeous pageant of the parade and returning to the grounds will peer freely and familiarly about the place of strange sounds and entrancing sights. We will watch the master mind of the circus and his associates in counsel and action. We will study the life, character, and habits of the motley throng of “show” people and learn of morals and manners, of hopes and fears, of trials and solicitudes; and we will pass sunny hours on meadows enamelled with violets and daisies and goldened with buttercups and dandelions, where the circus is passing its day.
We circus people have so high an opinion of our good qualities that we are not ashamed to introduce ourselves to you. As pilgrims with no abiding city, leading a life of multiplied activities and varied fortunes amid scenes of din and turmoil, hurry and agitation, our platform is courage, ambition, and energy, governed by honest purpose and tempered by humanity. We have our infirmities, our faults, and our sins, but also our virtues, our excellences, and our standards of perfection, and a discerning world has come no longer to regard us as unscrupulous invaders, but as invited and welcome guests. The voice of joy and health resounds through our ranks; we are united in fraternal good-will unbroken by dissension, our life of weal and woe is ever invested with peculiar delightful fascination, and boisterous relish transports itself from town to town. Memory clings with fond tenacity to halcyon days with the circus.