We circus people have so high an opinion of our good qualities that we are not ashamed to introduce ourselves to you. As pilgrims with no abiding city, leading a life of multiplied activities and varied fortunes amid scenes of din and turmoil, hurry and agitation, our platform is courage, ambition, and energy, governed by honest purpose and tempered by humanity. We have our infirmities, our faults, and our sins, but also our virtues, our excellences, and our standards of perfection, and a discerning world has come no longer to regard us as unscrupulous invaders, but as invited and welcome guests. The voice of joy and health resounds through our ranks; we are united in fraternal good-will unbroken by dissension, our life of weal and woe is ever invested with peculiar delightful fascination, and boisterous relish transports itself from town to town. Memory clings with fond tenacity to halcyon days with the circus. Sometime between 1820 and 1830 (circus annals tell not exactly the year), near what is now New York City, while a red-coated band blew forth a merry melody, a round-top tent swelled upward. The parents of some of the present-day performers remember the day. It was the first cloth circus shelter erected in this country, and then what was formerly an open-air show assumed the dignity and importance of an under-cover performance. A crude enough affair it was, as compared with the perfection and finish of the modern circus. The flags and streamers and bunting which add grace and beauty waved no friendly greeting; the clamorous welcome of side-show orators and ticket sellers was wanting; no menagerie offered its accumulated wealth of curious and snarling beasts; human curiosity had not been awakened by the overpowering splendor and magnificence of a preliminary parade; there was a lack of sentiment and excitement and appeal to the senses; only din and confusion and broiling heat. From this mean beginning has come the marvellous circus of to-day, involving a business so extensive that few people possess anything but the vaguest conception of its magnitude, organization, and methods of operation.