The inherent energy of the circus is never more fully demonstrated than when there is tardiness in arriving at the town of exhibition. The fault is seldom the circus’s and generally the railroad’s. Connections have been faulty, the engines inadequate to the requirements of the heavy trains, facilities for loading bad, or there has been delay in ferrying the sections. There are no faint hearts or falterers with the show and no weakness in these crises. Out of confusion worse confounded, order and convenience speedily reassert themselves, and the tremendous amount of preparation for the exhibition is rushed to wonderfully quick completion. Sometimes it has been nearly noon before we were able to drag a single wagon from the cars, but the programme for the day has been followed as implicitly as though there had been no hindrances. The parade emerged with customary roar and glare, the performance followed in regular sequence, and left behind was the same satisfactory trail of desolated pockets that the usual early coming would have accomplished. Sunday is the circus man’s day of rest and relaxation. After the pitching of the menagerie and the smaller tents, necessary to the accommodation to the animals, the day is granted for freedom and enjoyment. The start from the Saturday stand is always made the same night, and the Sabbath respite is improved for long railroad runs. The route is so planned in advance that on no one night except Saturday is the journey so long that, everything favorable, there will be tardy arrival. It is not deemed expedient to risk a longer “jump” than eighty or ninety miles unless transportation facilities are unusually advantageous. The trips of one hundred and fifty or two hundred miles are reserved for the night which precedes the day of exemption. So it is that the circus folk, ending their slumber, find the train still on the move, with a possible prospect of several more hours in their cramped quarters. The sagacious ones have examined the railroad schedule the day before and laid in a supply of fruit and food for this contingency. They preconceive how sorely taxed will be the resources of the train restaurant, for circus appetites are voracious in the morning. Chairs are soon placed on platforms and at windows, and the workingmen gather in groups on car tops or under the ample spread of the wagons. [Illustration: DISEMBARKING FROM THE CIRCUS TRAIN.]