At a late hour they came home, loitering around the barn a long time before they ventured into the presence of my father, whom my grandmother had somewhat appeased by telling him that “boys must sow their wild oats sometime, and it wasn’t best to be too strict with ’em, for it only made ’em act worse,” adding that “the Catholics were not the worst folks in the world, and they had just as much right to their form of worship as we had to ours.” This in a measure mollified him, and consequently the two boys only received a long lecture, and were debarred the privilege of going to the village, except on Sundays, for three weeks, a punishment which annoyed Will exceedingly. But nothing could subdue him, and the moment the three weeks had expired he was as ready for mischief as ever. For a long time the coming of a Circus had been heralded by flaming handbills in red and yellow, one of which Will plastered onto our great barn door, from which conspicuous post it was removed by my father, who conscientiously turned his back upon men and women riding on their heads, declaring it an outrage upon all rules of propriety, and denouncing circuses and circus-going people as utterly low and vulgar. Thus from my earliest remembrance had I been taught, and still my heart would throb faster, whenever, with the beat of the drum and the sound of the bugle, the long procession swept past our door, and more than once had I stolen to the top of the hill, whence could be seen the floating banner and swaying canvas, watching from afar the evil I dared not approach. Great, then, was my surprise, when, on the morning of the eventful day, Will suggested that Charlie, John, Lizzie, and I should run away in the evening and visit the “doings,” as he called it. I was shocked that he should propose _my_ going to such a place. “It was low and vulgar,” I told him, “and no one went there but loafers and rowdies.” But he assured me that I was mistaken, saying that “some of our most respectable people attended;” and then he wondered “how I was ever to know anything unless I once in a while went to a circus, or a theatre, or something. It was perfectly ridiculous,” he said, “for father to keep us so cooped up at home. Nobody else did so. There was Lawyer Smith’s daughter, and Judge Brown’s niece in Albany, who always went, and if it didn’t hurt them, it wouldn’t me.”