Waiting for the Circus, Galway
Next came one dreadful dwarf, made up as a hideous clown. Behind him rode an ordinary negro, not costumed in any special manner. He was enough novelty as he was.
And behind these two rode a man of the toothpowder vender type, with long hair, boiled shirt, sombrero, and no necktie.
He was Buff Bill.
And that made up the parade.
It was worth waiting for, if only to see what it is that constitutes a wondrous spectacle to a small boy.
Fifty years from now some prosperous Chicagoan will take his grandson to see a four-mile parade of some great circus of the period, with half a hundred elephants, a thousand noble horsemen, and scores of gilded chariots; and when the small boy voices his rapture the old man will say with sincerity:
"It's pretty good, I suppose, but you ought to have seen the circus that came to Galway when I was a boy of eight. That beat any circus I've ever seen since. I couldn't sleep for weeks thinking about it."