The bills appeared, with the following heading:
UNPARALLELED ATTRACTION.
On Monday Evening,
THE YOUTHFUL ROSCUSS!
EGLANTINE MOWBRAY!!
Will appear in his great rôle,
DOWN THE HILL.
Our simple villagers had seen circuses; but youthful Roscusses were entirely beyond their experience. Quite as unfamiliar was the word rôle, which, to their badly-lettered fancy, stood for movement, by 'turning on the surface, or with a circular motion, in which all parts of the surface are successively applied to a plane, 'as to roll a barrel or puncheon.' [You use Webster?]
So, when the 'show' opened, there was a large attendance, and in that vast multitude of two hundred and thirty men, women, and children, there was not one who did not anticipate an acrobatic performance.
The play pleased them, however. Temperance was rife among us in those days; it was 'in our midst,' as people ought not to say, and the drunken disgraces of John the Inebriate were appreciated. Still, there was an evident feeling of unsatisfied anticipation, which grew with every act, and in all the house there was not a soul who did not murmur to his or her neighbor, 'I wonder when he's goin' to roll down-hill.'