While this preliminary maneuvring is very gratifying in its results to the management, the burden it accumulates upon the two anxious men in the ticket wagon grows every minute. When finally the signal to begin operations is given, they face a sea of upturned, distorted, perspiring faces, and aloft the air is peppered with hands brandishing admission money. Everybody is irrational, unreasonable and excited. Children cry, women are on the verge of collapse, and men push and strain and mutter strange oaths. Uniformed employees strive in vain to maintain order. The wheels of the red wagon have been buried to the hubs, or it would be swept away in the rush. The mad, violent struggle continues for an hour, and thousands force their path or are carried bodily to the window and labor away with the cherished strips of printed pasteboard. A mountain of bills and coin grows and is toppled into baskets at their side. Soon these are filled and money litters the floor. There is no chance to assort or collect it now. With eyes fixed steadily before them, fingers and hands never lingering or sluggish, but intercepting a counterfeit offering like a flash, they work as if human automatons. Not until solitary arrivals denote the end of the rush do they relax. Thousands of dollars have changed hands in the brief period, yet the scene will be duplicated a few hours hence and the day will record a balance as correct in detail as the most exacting banking institution’s. There is a popular misapprehension about the moral purposes of the men in the ticket wagon. The impression seems to prevail among many sensible persons that they are modern highwaymen, lurking there for prey. An intimate knowledge of their character and conduct makes a definite denial only fair to them. In the swift shuffle of money, there is no intention on their part to take advantage of the circus’s patron. It is the fixed design of the management to inspire a feeling of security and confidence, and the selection of ticket-sellers has this end in view. Dismissal and possible criminal prosecution would be the penalty of detected “short change” or other swindling methods. There is only one legitimate source of outside profit, and that is furnished by the “walkaway,” circus vernacular for the person who unconsciously leaves his change behind. He is legion, strangely enough, and more remarkable still, it seldom seems to occur to him to return for his own. When he does it is promptly given him. Ticket-sellers insist vehemently that the “walkaway’s” contribution is not more than enough to reimburse them for mistakes in count which are unavoidable in the tumult, and more frequently than not to the benefit of the purchaser. Whether their comrades accept this assertion without reservation is not a subject to be discussed here.