A MODERN MERCURY
A Modern Mercury
I
On a cool morning in mid-June two little boys, very dusty and wearing very grimy waists, sat on the turfed mound of an ancient circus ring in the old fair ground enclosure, intently watching the gaunt, half-naked figure of a man in flapping white breeches who, high-stepping, sprinted back and forth along the stretch of the old race track. Their elbows on their knees, their chins in their grimy hands, they gazed fixedly at him whom they had trudged across the lots to see. For in his day he was the small boys' god, their best-loved hero, before whom it was their greatest joy to bend the knee.
"D' you think he kin do it?" Jimmy Thurston finally inquired, as the spare, ridiculous figure of the man brought up behind the tenantless judges' stand and for an instant was lost to sight.
Willie Trigger sneered. He was very superior, was Willie.
"Sure he kin!" he exclaimed. "Sure he kin!"