(I never heard of anybody sitting up to see the show depart. And yet it seems to me that would be the best time to run off with it.) The next day we visited the lots. It was no dream. See the litter that mussed up the place. We were all there. None had heard the man that runs the show say genially: “Yes, I think we can arrange to take you with us.” Here was the ring; here the tent-pole holes, and here a scrap of paper torn from a hoop the bareback rider leaped through.... Oh, now I know what I was going to tell you that the clown said. The comicalest thing! He picked up one of these hoops and began to sniffle. So the ring-master asked him what he was crying about. “I--I--was thinking of my mother. Smf! My good old mother!” So the ring-master asked him what made him think of his mother. “This.” And he held up the paper-covered hoop. The ring-master couldn't see how that put the clown in mind of his mother. He was awful dumb, that man. “It looks just like the pancakes she used to make for us.” Well, sir, we just hollered and laughed at that. And after we had quieted down a little, the ringmaster says: “As big as that?” “Bigger,” says the clown. “Why, she used to make 'em so big we used 'em for bedclothes.” “Indeed” (Just like that. He took it all in, just as if it was so.) “Oh, my, yes! I mind one time I was sleeping with my little brother, and I waked up just as cold--Brr! But I was cold!” “But how could that be, sir? You just now said you had pancakes for bedclothes.” “Yes, but my little brother got hungry in the night, and et up all the cover.” Laugh? Why, they screamed. Me? I thought I'd just about go up. But the ring master never cracked a smile. He didn't see the joke at all. Good-by, old clown, friend of our childhood, goodby, good-by forever! And you, our other friend, the street parade, must you go, too? And you, the gorgeous show-bills, must you tread the path toward the sundown? Good-by! Good-by! In that dreary land where you are going, the Kingdom of the Ausgespielt, it may comfort you to recollect the young hearts you have made happy in the days that were, but never more can be again. THE COUNTY FAIR Whether or not the name had an influence on the weather, I don't know. Perhaps it did rain some years, but, as I remember, County Fair time seems to have had a sky perfectly cloudless, with its blue only a little dulled around the edges where it came close to the ground and the dust settled on it. Things far off were sort of hazy, but that might have been the result of the bonfires of leaves we had been having evenings after supper. In Fair weather, when the sun had been up long enough to get a really good start, it was right warm, but in the shade it was cool, and nights and mornings there was a chill in the air that threatened worse things to come.