The Good People Came Out to Show
the Children the Animals
A Good Parade
If some man had cornered the children market day before yesterday, he could have made a fortune.
Yesterday was circus day, and every deacon and elder and staid business man in Houston who wanted to see Mademoiselle Marie Meers ride barebacked and walk the tight rope, and had no kids of his own, was out offering love and money for somebody’s else to take along as an excuse for going to the circus. In some New England towns large families make a living by renting out their children to church members for this purpose.
When a man tells you that he doesn’t believe in the Old Testament, just ask him what made him follow the band wagon and the steam piano and the animal cages when he was a boy, and what makes him still sneak into the circus and feed the elephant peanuts and stare the monkeys out of countenance. It’s nothing in the world but a feeling we all inherited from Noah when he put on the greatest show on water for a run of forty nights and as many matinees all over the world. The smell of the gas jets and sawdust, the crack of the ring-master’s whip, the ancient jokes of the clown, and the wonderful linguistic performances of the lemonade man are temptations that most of us strive to resist in vain.
For many weeks Houston has been posted with the bills and banners of Barnum and Bailey’s show, and as the time drew nigh the small boy developed insomnia and an unusual affection for indulgent uncles and big brothers with money.
When the day came, the pleasure of anticipation developed into the rapture of attainment.
All men think of their boyhood days with fond remembrance when the circus comes. Even Susan B. Anthony falls into dreamy retrospection when she sees the animals walking in the parade two by two, and she recalls the time long, long ago when she first saw them go in out of the wet during that dreadful forty days and nights’ rain.
The street parade at 10 o’clock was the best ever seen in Houston.