When You Were a Boy

by Edwin L. Sabin

“You can be one clown, Fat, and John’ll be the other,” proffered Hen, with fine diplomacy. “And you and he can make b’lieve fight, and things. We ought to have two clowns, you know.”

But the glowing picture of the two clowns did not appeal to Fat’s imagination.

“Naw,” he whined. “If anybody else is goin’ to be clown, I don’t want to.”

Accordingly Fat was awarded the clownship, and you said you’d just as lief be contortionist, which he couldn’t be.

Clowns were really a drug on the market. Not a boy but aspired to the chair, and it required no little tact to steer them into other lines.

The organization, as finally effected, was as follows:

Hen, ringmaster.

You, contortionist.

Billy, who could hang by his toes and do other things on the trapeze, and who, as a tumbler, could stand on his head (sometimes) without touching his hands.

Tom, who could do things on the trapeze, and who was a juggler learning to keep three balls going in the air.