Rather hotly I argued the question with my editor: “After all, music-critics are men and brethren,” I said. “Except when they are sisters,” he ironically interposed. I sternly resisted a temptation to blush and continued: “Because I love Chopin must I forever write of his music--toujours perdrix! It’s an indigestion of strawberries, clotted cream, and green eyes. I’m suffering from spring-fever. Let me write a story about the circus.” “Why not Ibsen?” interposed my editor, who is subtle or nothing. “He was a grand man,” I assented, “but in the present case he is only red-herring across the trail. Suppose I mix up Chopin with sawdust merely for the sake of the mélange?” My chief assented, wearily. There are more important problems on the carpet than Chopin. Jim Beck vs. Pop Hylan in a catch-as-catch-can for the welter-weight championship. Or the celebrated Mrs. J. and the Beethoven-Hamburger steak controversy. Why not Chopin and sawdust? I retired with a thoughtful mien. Had I ever been to the circus? What a singular question. Yet, yet--! No, I confessed to myself, I had not been to the circus for at least three decades. Critics are tame cats away from their regular guests. In the concert-room or at the play, armed with our little hammers, we are as brave as plumbers; but on a roof garden, in church, at a circus, or innocently slumbering, we are the mildest gang of pirates that ever scuttled an American sonata or forced ambitious leading-ladies to walk the plank. We may go alone to the theatre with impunity and another fellow’s girl, but at the circus we need a nurse to show us the ropes and keep us from falling under the elephants’ hoofs. A private nurse--not necessarily old--say I, is the only safety for a critic out of his element; otherwise a sense of the dignity of our calling is not maintained. Therefore, I swallowed my Chopin scheme without undue fervor and went to the circus. No matter which one. All circuses are in an attractive key to me. Thackeray said the same thing about the play, and said it better. Any circus will serve as a peg for my sawdust symbolism. Any Garden will do, so that it has a capitalized initial letter. (No allusion to Magical Mary.) The circus! What a corrective for the astringent Ibsen or the morbidezza of Sarmatia’s sweet singer, Chopin! The circus. It is a revelation. One thing I regretted--that I could not be a boy again, with dirty hands, a shining brow, and a heart brimming over with joy. Peter Pan! Oh! to recapture that first careless rapture, as Browning or some other writing Johnny said; surely he must have meant the circus, which is the one spot on our muddy planet where rapture rhymes with the sawdust ring.