------------------------------------------------------------------------ Transcriber’s Note: This version of the text cannot represent certain typographical effects. Italics are delimited with the ‘_’ character as _italic_. The few minor errors, attributable to the printer, have been corrected. Please see the transcriber’s note at the end of this text for details regarding the handling of any textual issues encountered during its preparation. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CIRCUS LIFE AND CIRCUS CELEBRITIES BY THOMAS FROST AUTHOR OF ‘THE OLD SHOWMEN AND THE OLD LONDON FAIRS,’ ‘LIVES OF THE CONJURERS,’ ETC. [Illustration] _A NEW EDITION_ =London= CHATTO AND WINDUS, PICCADILLY 1881 PREFACE. ------- There are probably few persons who do not number among the most pleasant recollections of their youth their first visit to a circus, whether their earliest sniff of the saw-dust was inhaled in the building made classical by Ducrow, or under the canvas canopy of Samwell or Clarke. In my boyish days, the cry of ‘This way for the riders!’ bawled from the stentorian vocal organs of the proprietor or ring-master of a travelling circus, never failed to attract all the boys, and no small proportion of the men and women, to the part of the fair from which it proceeded. Fairs have become things of the past within twelve or fifteen miles of the metropolis; but ever and anon a tenting circus pitches, for a day or two, in a meadow, and the performances prove as attractive as ever. The boys, who protest that they are better than a play,—the young women, who are delighted with the ‘loves of horses,’—the old gentlemen, who are never so pleased as when they are amusing their grandchildren,—the admirers of graceful horsemanship of all ages,—crowd the benches, and find the old tricks and the old ‘wheezes,’ as the poet found the view from Grongar Hill, ‘ever charming—ever new.’