Ten minutes after the performance has begun, there is a scattering of the executive force at the main tent entrance and the canvasmen take possession. The ropes and stakes holding in position the marquee and menagerie tent are loosened, and the doorkeeper moves to the open fly in the big tent, called the back door. The evening exhibition programme is arranged with the view to finishing with the trained animals as soon as possible that they may be placed safely away for the night. So it is that the elephants, camels, zebra, ponies and other led animals are off with measured tread for the cars before the show is well under way. Then cages are closed, horses hitched, side walls lowered and the caravan passes out into the night. The order “lower away!” rings sharply, and the menagerie tent drops with a heavy puff and sigh. The denuded centre poles follow it to the ground and, where a few hours before was a white encampment is now a dark, bare area, rutted with wheels, trodden by many feet and littered with peanut shells and sawdust. Only the noisy “big top,” glowing like a mammoth mushroom, and the side-show canvas, where the band thumps and the “barkers” roar with tireless energy, remain to mark the spot. The work of stripping the larger tent continues throughout the performance. As fast as a performer finishes his act his appliance is deftly conveyed to a waiting wagon. The entire arena has been divested of its maze and mass of apparatus before the audience have reached the open. They stare in amazement at the changed scene, as revealed in the lights and shadows of the torches. So expeditious and so smooth has been the work of the circus men that no knowledge of the magnitude of the accomplishment was conveyed to the crowd inside. The side-show orators receive the outgoing throng with renewed clamorings. To take this last advantage and let no chance for profit escape, the tent has been kept open. The inmates yawn with the weariness and monotony of it all and eagerly await their last call to the front. Then begins a dash for the freedom and privacy which has been denied them since morning. In the “big top” the concert band is fiddling valiantly and a woman in skirts tries to raise her voice above the noise of falling wood and stentorian command. Workmen are lugging the seats away, and tugging at ropes and stakes. The side-walls peel off as the last spectator emerges and performers hurry from their dressing-room. Then the thin white cloth roof comes tumbling from above like a monster bird; the encampment is no more. Through dark, deserted, silent streets the last man and wagon make their way. Nothing is left behind in the hurried leave taking. Everything large and small must be individually accounted for by its custodian.